SEVERAL years ago, in Paris, I attended a performance of “nouveau cirque,” or “new circus.” This was far from your usual lion tamers and elephants: the show took place in a sleek white tent, its lobby filled with fashionable people lounging on red velvet couches. The performers, who wore tattered suit coats and scuffed leather shoes, were actors as much as acrobats, dancers as much as daredevils. They chanted Proust into crackling microphones and shouted Simon and Garfunkel lyrics.

When the strongman, screaming, spun with his enormous wooden chair, I could see the sweat pour from his brow. It was a brooding piece of theater, dark and intense. Why was it so hard to find this sort of performance, let alone with this sort of audience, in the United States?

After decades of decline, the circus is booming around the world. From Norway to Nepal, new circus companies and schools are springing to life at a rate unprecedented in the modern circus’s nearly 250-year history.

In France, there are more than 450 troupes and 600 schools. Some 20 countries, including Belgium, Australia and Mexico, have established professional circus training grounds. At the National Circus School of Montreal, where I now teach, more than 150 full-time students come from 20 countries to train in facilities that rival Juilliard’s. The school’s job placement rate is 95 percent.