Le Numéro Barbette: Destabilising Gender on the High Wire and the Flying Trapeze

Abstract

In the autumn of 1923, Barbette (Vander Clyde) took Parisian theatres by storm with a provocative amalgamation of trapeze artistry and female impersonation. His act in interwar France was timely and daring. While the destructive results of the First World War had left the country with deep concerns about the degeneration of the male body and the nation as a whole, Barbette's performance signified a homosexual identity and a questioning of traditional categories of masculinity and femininity. Fostering the interest of controversial poet and film maker, Jean Cocteau and his artistic entourage, Barbette's performance received much praise and was immortalised in Cocteau's 1926 essay Le Numéro Barbette. Drawing on a number of under-examined performance reviews by French critics, as well as Steegmuller's interview with Barbette, I focus on how Barbette's career and performances contributed to debates about the constructedness of gender and how they were indicative of the tensions of a post-war culture that wanted to ‘return to order’. Barbette's blurring of gender categories during his aerial performances embodied these post-war tensions and signified a liminality in which gender could be destabilised and reimagined without severe repercussions.