circus stories, le cirque vu par…

Transcription

CIRCUS STORIES, LE CIRQUE VU PAR…
Initiative menée par En Piste, Circus Stories, Le
cirque vu par… a offert à 10 journalistes culturels du
Canada et du nord-est des États-Unis une résidence
d’écriture sur le cirque contemporain, dans le cadre du
festival MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE
2014. Cette première nord-américaine, soutenue par le
Conseil des Arts du Canada et le Conseil des arts de
Montréal, avait pour objectifs de permettre aux
participants de développer un discours critique sur le
cirque, d’encourager la circulation des connaissances
et de favoriser le rôle des médias dans ce domaine.
En Piste, le regroupement national des arts du cirque,
rassemble les professionnels et les organismes du
secteur circassien et travaille à mettre en place les
conditions favorables au développement des arts du
cirque à l’échelle du Canada. Le regroupement s’allie
à de nombreux partenaires afin de soutenir les artistes,
les projets en émergence, les organismes de formation,
les producteurs et les diffuseurs.
Du 3 au 6 juillet 2014, 6 journalistes du Canada –
Montréal, St-Catharines, Vancouver – et 4 des ÉtatsUnis – Boston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphie –
ont contribué à une série de débats thématiques avec
modérateur. Ils ont également rencontré différents
experts du milieu circassien ainsi que les créateurs et
interprètes de spectacles auxquels ils ont assisté dans
le cadre du festival MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT
CiRQUE.
L’activité s’inspire d’une formule européenne, Unpack
the arts1, et les participants y ont vécu une expérience
unique guidés par Yohann Floch. Sensibilisés aux
enjeux du cirque contemporain et conscientisés à
l’étendue de ce paysage artistique, les participants ont
approfondi leur réflexion sur la dramaturgie du cirque
et les nouvelles tendances dans le domaine. Ils vous
livrent dans les textes de cette publication le fruit de
leurs observations et de leur réflexion sur un art dont
ils ont appris à mieux connaître les multiples visages.
Initiated by En Piste, Circus Stories, Le cirque vu
par… offered to 10 cultural journalists from Canada
and the northeastern United States a residency program
on contemporary circus within the framework of the
MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE 2014.
The aim of this North American premiere, supported by
the Arts Council of Canada and the Arts Council of
Montreal, was to develop critical discourses regarding
circus arts, to encourage the circulation of knowledge
and to foster the role of media within circus arts.
En Piste, the Circus Arts National Network, gathers
professionals and organizations from the Canadian
circus arts sector and works towards establishing
favourable conditions for the development of circus
arts in Canada. En Piste networks with numerous
partners for the purpose of supporting performers, new
projects, training organizations, show producers and
presenters.
From July 3 rd to July 6th, 6 journalists from Canada –
Montreal, St.Catharines, and Vancouver – and 4 from
the United States – Boston, New Haven, New York,
and Philadelphia – contributed to a series of thematic
debates with a moderator. They also met with different
experts from the circus world as well as creators and
performers of the shows they attended as part of the
MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE festival.
The activity, run by Yohann Floch, is inspired by a
European program, Unpack the arts2, gave the
participants a unique experience. Sensitized to issues
of contemporary circus and made aware of the extent
of the artistic landscape, the participants have
deepened their reflection on the dramaturgy of the
circus and new trends in the field. In this publication,
they share their observations and their thoughts about
the many faces of the contemporary circus arts.
Happy reading !
En Piste team
Bonne lecture !
L’équipe d’En Piste
1. Projet coordonné par Circuscentrum (Gand, Belgique) et co-financé
par le programme Culture de la Commission européenne.
2. Project coordinated by Circuscentrum (Gand, Belgique) and cofunded with the support from the European Commission.
EN PISTE | CIRCUS STORIES, LE CIRQUE VU PAR … | PREMIÈRE ÉDITION, JUILLET 2014
Page 1
CLAMBER ALERT
BY CHRISTOPHER ARNOTT
It is a defining gesture of the New Circus movement,
an essential punctuation in this antic art form’s revised
vocabulary.
Let’s call it clambering. Clambering comes when two
circus performers intersect in the early stages of
performing a set routine. In Old Circus, that set-up is
poised, pristine and graceful. The performers have
perfect posture, aligning themselves expertly. Such
preparation is a refined art in itself, just like the mount
and dismount in horseback riding or the bows one
takes in competitive dancing.
Clambering is the opposite of poise. It’s a collision
rather than a construction, a cacophony instead of a
harmony. It’s messy on purpose, though no less
deliberate than more refined-looking moves. A
clamberer doesn’t indulge in “proper” preparation. He
or she clambers up the nearest object—usually another
performer’s body—and doesn’t waste any time with
preliminaries.
Clambering could be the called New Circus’
equivalent of Method Acting. It’s harsh and rough and
real. It’s supremely confident, a full-body act of
bluster. It instills immediate humanity in a
performance. Just as the old Method School actors of
the mid-20th century America sought to enliven their
memorized lines and scripted plots with some raw
human energy, New Circus performers clamber into
their extraordinary acrobatics so they won’t look so
rehearsed.
I saw solid examples of clambering in every one of the
nine shows I attended at the 2014 MONTRÉAL
COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE festival. Whether the
stunt in question involved acrobatics, balancing,
trampolines, pole climbing or clowning, performers
clambered to get there.
One of the best examples of clambering I witnessed
was in the show which served for many Complètement
Cirque attendees as the introduction, and a central
reference point, for the entire festival. Babel Remix
was an ensemble piece created for students at the
National Circus School. Such showcases are devised
annually, with established theatrical directors enlisted
to give the performances a fluid continuity and
thematic context. Babel Remix—so named because it
was a revised revival of Babel, a featured event at the
previous year’s festival—was conceived and directed
by Anthony Venisse, a celebrated trapeze performer
who has also distinguished himself as a dancer and
clown. Venisse was performing his solo piece The
Concierge later in the 2014 festival.
In Babel Remix, a single young performer might
scramble up onto the stage from the lawn of Place
Emilie-Gamelin (the city park where the show was
being performed), climb up some scaffolding, dive
into a roll that propels him across a platform, jump off
the edge of that platform, swing on a rope to another
section of the stage, do a series of flips to travel across
a higher platform until he reaches his destination. This
is a fluid, artful routine which could be spotlit as a solo
turn. But in Babel Remix, many other performers are
doing similar routines at virtually the same time. They
flit past each other, over each other, past each other,
despite each other.
Babel Remix is a mere half-hour in length. Its
hallmarks are urgency and immediacy. A dozensstrong chorus of young circus artists, clad in a vaguely
tribal attire of kilts and skirts, roam around the park at
the outset of the performance. Then the clambering
commences. The chorus rushes to the front of the
stage, ascending it without bothering to use stairs or
ramps. This grand entrance is done in as disorderly a
manner as possible, with the performers jostling each
other out of the way. Then this milling rabble suddenly
finds order and purpose, forming a phalanx and
throwing one of their ranks aloft, so that the aerial
events can start. A variation on this en masse move
occurs later in the show when the chorus seeks to scale
the elaborate multi-story setting assemblage of pipes
and platforms which contains most of the acrobatic
action. This time, the onslaught is savage, the
clambering reminiscent of the rabid zombies
assaulting the walls of Jerusalem in the Brad Pitt
thriller World War Z. In Babel Remix, however, the
chaos morphs smoothly into a set of trapeze and
trampoline tricks.
Babel Remix was true to its Biblical inspiration of
multi-cultural confusion resulting from the
construction of a heavenly tower. (“Therefore is the
name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there
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confound the language of all the earth”—The Book of
Genesis, chapter 11, verse 9). The clambering added to
the deliberate chaotic tone of the piece. It wasn’t just a
bit of energetic choreography. Having the chorus run
about pell-mell, scared and unable to communicate,
was a key dramatic element.
When there was clambering in other MONTRÉAL
COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE shows this year, there
wasn’t necessarily the same theatrical vision as was
glimpsed in Babel Remix. In the Throw2Catch
production Reset, which had a vaguely technological
theme, one man clambered up another man’s back
while that second man was juggling. Two women
threw themselves bodily at a man, who resisted their
advances and batted them away in such a manner that
the women could do flips and handstands. A man
yanked a woman onto his back, then kept her there as
he climbed up the bent legs and shoulders of two other
men for a rapid pyramid effect. Perhaps
Throw2Catch’s ultimate clamber was when one
member of the troupe climbed over and around
members of the audience, stepping on the armrests of
their seats and using the aisles as a makeshift stage.
But despite being used so frequently in the
performance, and being done so deftly, this was a most
basic form of clambering. This kind of clambering is
simply an extension of the informality which so many
small circus theater companies treasure. They wear
streetclothes instead of costumes. They show
emotions. They don’t go “Hey!” and elicit applause
when they dismount from an especially impressive
routine. They clamber and slouch and crawl instead of
standing erect and looking poised and pompous.
They’re real folks, get it?
Lapsus, a French company, was bringing their twoyear-old show Six Pieds sur Terre to North America
for the first time. Six Pieds was distinctive for its
consistent tone (kind of a Beckettian/Brechtian
wasteland thing) and a couple of ubiquitous props:
eggshells and wooden building blocks. The six-person
troupe wear peasant clothes and express wonderment
and dismay at their bleak surroundings. Naturally, this
is an invitation to clamber. The most impressive
Lapsus clamber is a bit when the company’s sole
female member, Gwenaelle Traonouez, clambers up a
man, then clambers further up the man who’s standing
on the first man’s shoulders, then does a handstand.
Six Pieds sur Terre also features a two-man duet in
which a small man launches himself repeatedly at a
larger man, lurching and leaping and grabbing and
holding on while the larger man tries in vain to
dislodge him. The looseness of this unusual athletic
duet gives it a strangely homoerotic quality that it
simply would not have in a more formal and
traditional acrobatic display. The men play into this
informality, with the smaller man giving coquettish
looks to his carrier, and even bussing him on the
cheek.
Intersection – Photo: Mathieu Letourneau
From bottom to top : Matias Plaul, William Underwood and
Héloïse Bourgeois
Clambering is often used for expressions of intimacy.
This is particularly true of shows staged by 7 Doigts
de la Main, which has done more to refine the art of
clambering than any other New Circus company. 7
Doigts opens its signature piece Traces with its
performers rushing on stage in darkness and
confusion, announcing themselves individually and
independently in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic
landscape. As the performers introduce themselves
and acclimate themselves to their surroundings, they
begin to interact more and more. These interactions
inevitably involve a kind of clambering. Where oldfashioned circuses tend to present any sort of act
involving a pair of artists (on a trapeze, on each
other’s shoulders, on a rope) as a love duet, the
individuals in 7 Doigts duets can be guarded,
suspicious and competitive.
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Another 7 Doigts show, Sequence 8, the troupe raises
clambering to a new plateau. The established clamber,
so
common
throughout
MONTRÉAL
COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE this year that it appears
to have already become a cliché, is this: one performer
briskly scrambles up to the head and shoulders of a
fellow performers, using hips and buttocks and back as
stepping stones. Once they’ve climbed above the
waist, the climbers wrap their arms and legs around
the torso or neck of the person they’ve just climbed.
Eventually, and quickly, they are then able to position
themselves for traditional balancing or tumbling
routines.
In Sequence 8, the clambering itself is the routine. One
of the lighter performers is able to walk swiftly,
practically running, over the shoulders, arms and open
palms of the rest of the troupe. Flips and leaps are part
of the mix, but the momentum and wonderment of the
routine comes from the clambering.
In 7 Doigts de la Main’s latest show, Intersection,
which was created expressly for MONTRÉAL
COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE, clambering was used
largely in duets. Again, the troupe seemed far more
progressive than other circus troupes in their use of
informal, pushy, physically provocative staging
techniques. Several of the scenarios in Intersections
involved argumentative and even violent relationships.
One of these was played out on a climbing pole, an
area where 7 Doigts de la Main excels. The pole duo
enjoyed an elevated embrace, clutching each other
around the pole. Later, they climbed over and under
each other on the pole. By the time they did the
headfirst dives that have become a familiar part of
pole routines, with the upside-down performers
grabbing the base of the pole and stopping inches
before their heads hit the floor, this man and woman
had established themselves as something more than
daredevils. There were passionate lovers in a difficult
relationship.
A less romantic, though no less sexualized, aspect of
clambering came up in Barbu-Foire Electro Trad, a
much-hyped new show from the maverick Quebecois
circus troupe Cirque Alfonse. This was a busy,
boisterous show that used a nightclub milieu and a
stripclub runway of a stage to update classic North
American burlesque and magic show routines for New
Circus audiences. It also laid on a lot of local color.
The men of Cirque Alfonse are bearded and burly and
round-bellied, the antithesis of the trim cleanshaven
artistes of traditional (and even most New) circuses.
Barbu was punctuated with arch Quebecisms,
including folk anthems played by the show’s live rock
band.
Ultimately, Barbu was not so much about updating an
antiquated popular artform as it was about making a
good argument for performing circus act in a
dangerously tight space just inches from the audience.
Breathless risktaking defined the show, from its fullcast roller-skating intro to the use of much larger
wheels, such as bicycles and hula hoops. Given its oldfashioned Burly-Q and Vaudeville trappings, Barbu
had a relentless cartoonish quality. When they
clamber—notably in a four-man standing pile-up
which must have frightened the patrons sitting nearby,
or when sitting casually on each other’s shoulders as if
in a lighthearted chicken-fight game—the members of
Cirque Alfonse (many of whom are blood-related)
didn’t clamber to make a point about how human they
were or how passionate they were about their craft or
how modern and trendy they were. They clamber
because it suits their slovenly style and probably
because it’s just funnier that way. The Barbu revue as
a whole was hit-or-miss, but it had a consistent funloving, freewheeling charm. The sight of a bunch of
brothers piling on each other added to the amusement.
Did anyone NOT clamber at MONTRÉAL
COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE? The more traditional
circus troupes wouldn’t think of it. Small Tent…Big
Shoulders, a presentation by Midnight Circus, a
community-based circus from Chicago, Illinois, was
the epitome of old-fashioned big-top entertainment.
Though there’s a minimum of talking in Small Tent…,
Midnight Circus utilizes a ringmaster and clowns and
other elements that many New Circus companies
prefer to do without. When an acrobat climbs a pole
with a woman standing on his head, it has none of the
intentional akilter craziness of Babel Remix or a 7
Doigts de la Main show. It’s a composed, focused,
carefully orchestrated moment. There is certainly a lot
of loose, wild physical shtick in a Midnight Circus
revue, and the cast exudes friendliness and familiarity.
But they are costumed acrobats, not earthy, reckless
characters. They are a big happy family, not feuding
lovers. They are traditionalists. Traditional circus folk
do not clamber.
Neither does the best-known contemporary circus
company in the world, Cirque du Soleil. While Cirque
du Soleil has brought many innovations to the circus
arts, from technology to design to original music
scores to an internationally understood mime language
that does away with the bombastic banter of
ringmasters. But to the New Circus movement, Cirque
du Soleil is the establishment. Cirque du Soleil is 30
(founded in 1984), and just like the hippies of the
1960s, the New Circus types don’t trust those over 30.
The streetclothes-and-clambering of the New Circuses
seems to be a direct response to the immaculately
Page 4
staged, shimmering, clockwork-precision artistry of
Cirque du Soleil.
Cirque du Soleil’s show at MONTRÉAL
COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE was the North
American premiere of Kurios. The piece has an
extravagant, modernist “steampunk” design blending
the company’s familiar fantastical storybook elements
with a Victorian/Industrial era look and a 1920s jazz
pacing. For a Cirque du Soleil entertainment, this is
positively progressive, yet despite the fleet-footed
Flapper-era setting and the metallic heft of
locomotives and diving machines, Kurios has none of
the abrasive, slam-bang qualities of the New Circus
movement. Kurios’ scenes are carefully composed and
tightly choreographed, even the clowning. When a
balancing act appears, the performers mount each
other’s shoulders through a series of balletic flips and
tosses. There is no room for clambering. There is also
no apparent understanding of it. The frivolity of a
Cirque du Soleil spectacle is fine-tuned. Informality is
not welcome here.
Cirque du Soleil creates magical environments where
heavily made-up human beings dazzle the audience by
pretending to be some sort of alien culture where
superhuman feats are commonplace. The New Circus
movement, by contrast, eschews the superhuman,
preferring to appear human. These performer’s bodies
are not machines or fairy-tale creations. We see them
limber up and sweat and furrow their brows. We see
them clamber, not strut or preen, to get where they
want to get.
In the most deeply moving performance of
MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE 2014,
clambering was an essential dramatic element.
Acrobates is a tribute to Fabrice Champion, a skilled
acrobat who became paralyzed from the neck down
from the sort of occupational hazard that threatens all
circus performers. Using filmic elements (footage
from a documentary about Champion’s struggles) and
a narrative framework that more generally explores the
psychological mindset of an acrobat, Acrobates
expresses a sensitivity and emotional intensity that is
rare even in the rawer, human realm of New Circus.
The two performers in Acrobates, Alexandre Fournier
and Matias Pilet are very differently built. Fournier is
tall, light-haired and broad-shouldered. Pilet is small,
dark and slender. Given the established physical
language of New Circus, it is inevitable that the slight
Pilet will clamber up the treelike Fournier. If
Acrobates were a comedy, this would be a Mutt and
Jeff act, with the imposing taller man looking down
his nose at the pesky little guy buzzing around him.
This in fact was how that male duet played out in
Lapsus’ Six Pieds sur Terre—a comic bout where the
smaller man leapt at the larger man only to be swatted
away. In Acrobates, however, the clambering
illustrated a very different sort of male bonding. When
Pilet climbed on Fournier’s shoulders, the move
exhibited comfort and trust and shared acrobatic goals.
The two men, operating as one, foreshadowed the
dramatization of Pilet’s character losing the use of his
limbs, when he is left to flounder and flop about
onstage in a harrowing solo dance. Acrobates ends in
an exhilarating and enlightening acrobatic display that
demonstrates not just the skills that a great acrobat can
share but the hopes and goals and dreams and idealism
he shares along with that talent. Acrobates is a
complex psychological drama built upon acrobat
routines. It isn’t a clichéd story of how hard one must
rehearse to be an artist. It is about how a dedicated
artist thinks and acts and moves. When Matias Pilet
clambers upon Alexandre Fournier, it isn’t the mad
crowded scramble of Babel Remix or the lovers’
quarrel of Intersection or the frisky family frolic of
Barbu. It’s something altogether new—an internalized
exploration of friendship and respect.
Clambering has come a long way. It’s a shorthand
gesture that suggests a certain freshness, intimacy and
modernity. It’s loose and informal. It’s ragged and
impulsive. It’s also the way many New Circus
companies introduce a contemporary theatricality into
their performances. Clambering helps define a
character. It hastens a storyline. It’s a new way of
getting your attention just before a major stunt
happens. It’s especially meaningful because it’s so
natural, so human, and so matter-of-fact. It’s also
squarely in the circus tradition of defying gravity and
soaring to unchartered heights.
“I need to climb up something right now, so I can
jump or flip or climb even higher. What shall I climb?
How about you?!”
CHRISTOPHER ARNOTT lives in Connecticut, where he has written about theater and other lively arts for over 25
years. His blog is New Haven Theater Jerk http://scribblers.us/tj/
Page 5
REFLECTIONS ON THE 2014 MONTREAL
COMPLÈTEMENT CIRQUE FESTIVAL
BY KAREN FRICKER
Each of its ten participants came to the “Circus
Stories, Le Cirque vu par….” residency with a
particular perspective. Mine is that of a theatre scholar
and theatre critic with a strong, growing interest in
contemporary circus, but a limited ability to see circus
productions because very little of the exciting circus
from Québec tours to Ontario (where I live) or the rest
of North America. Thus I was thrilled to see six shows
at the MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE
festival, meet the artists behind them, talk to important
figures on the Québec circus scene, and to discuss it
all with the other residency participants and the circus
experts Yohann Floch and Françoise Boudreault.
The outstanding piece of work we saw at the festival –
and one of the best productions I’ve seen in a long
time – was Acrobates by the French company le
Monfort. This 75-minute long show has been touring
for a year and a half in Europe; this was its North
American premiere. It is a collaboration between
director Stéphane Ricordel, acrobats Mathias Pilet and
Alexandre Fournier, and filmmaker Olivier Meyrou;
and works with the uncanny on-screen presence of
Fabrice Champion, a close friend and former colleague
of Ricordel from the legendary trapeze company Les
Arts Sauts. It starts with a montage of film clips in
which Champion, who was paralyzed from the chest
down in 2004 in an accident during a Les Arts Sauts
performance, is creating a circus show with the
able-bodied Pilet and Fournier. In this, already,
Acrobates stakes out daring territory: circus is all
about managed risk, and the question of what happens
if something goes wrong leading to injury or death is a
considerable taboo. These film clips are part a
documentary by Meyrou about Pilet, Fournier, and
Champion’s show, and more broadly about the
conundrum that is a disabled circus performer.
About 20 minutes into Acrobates, spectators’
expectations are confounded by the revelation that
Champion died in 2011. Acrobates is the four
surviving men’s response to this devastating turn of
events; it is not, however, a sentimental tribute.
Rather, as Ricordel told us after the show, for him
Acrobates is “about friendship.” He and his
collaborators turned to creativity – to the art form they
shared with Champion and still share together – in
response to loss. The live, embodied portion of the
show kicks in with Pilet and Fournier working in very
dim light on a sharply raked platform, running,
tumbling, cartwheeling and handspringing, not really
interacting with each other. The platform is purposely
pitched at a high angle, making these stunts nearly
impossible to accomplish: the evident struggle is part
of the aesthetic and meaning-making. At one point one
of the acrobats throws himself into a passage of
choreography with particular intensity as we hear a
voice-over from Champion about all the things his
injury meant he could no longer do: walk, run, climb,
do acrobatics, have an orgasm. We hear him say over
and over “J’en peux plus” – I can’t take it anymore –
becoming increasingly intense and despairing. The
phrase takes on a broader meaning: it becomes about
the struggles with grief of the friends left behind; and,
for me, it evoked in a very visceral way the extreme
frustration of trying to accomplish or get beyond
something, and just not being able to.
A centre panel of the raked platform is then lowered
and the two performers work in the rectangular frame
it creates, as well as on top of the slope; the lights
come up slightly and it becomes easier to see them.
Finally, in full light at the front of the stage, the pair
execute a wonderfully choreographed series of handto-hand and floor acrobatic moves, which they repeat
in different variations, becoming more fluid and more
in synch with each other each time. The cumulative
effect of watching the two men working together,
holding each other up, and trusting each other was
incredibly moving. This show is demanding for the
acrobats to perform, and it’s not easy to watch either.
But the crafted-ness of it, the precision, and the
increasingly layered signification reward engagement.
I would never have guessed that this beautiful final
section with its detailed, layered evocation of trust,
love, and creativity is where Acrobates would end up,
given how it began. And (as a final kicker) the themes
of art and friendship intertwined even further when
Ricordet told us what he feels this show has meant for
Pilet and Fournier: “When you get out of circus school
you are not an artist. You are a circus technician,
Page 6
maybe. To be an artist is to give and to get. These two
guys were not artists when we started. These two guys
became artists on stage.”
Acrobates – Photo: Cindy Boyce
From bottom to top : Alexandre Fournier and Matias Pilet
The two biggest-news Québec premieres in the
Festival were 7 Doigts de la Main’s Intersection and
Cirque Alfonse’s Barbu-Foire Electro-Trad. Both are
impressive shows, the work of well-regarded,
successful companies pushing themselves into new
areas of form and content. It was also my feeling,
shared by most of my colleagues, that both shows are
not yet fully realized; I hope they continue to mature
and tighten up as the companies perform them. In the
case of Intersection, it’s particularly difficult to assess
its level of completion because one of its performers,
Danica Gagnon-Plamondon, was injured the night
before the opening, leading to some very last-minute
work by directors Gipsy Snider and Samuel Tétreault
and the seven remaining performers in reworking the
piece around Gagnon-Plamondon’s absence.
Intersection introduces us to eight (or, as we saw it,
seven) individuals whose life paths cross in the course
of the production. This theme is evoked by Cédric
Lord’s striking set design – two runways forming an X
in the centre of the in-the-round performance space.
The performers devised their characters; all are
twenty-somethings on personal journeys of selfexploration: an unlucky-in-love American bartender,
an aspiring Québécoise weather girl, a South
American making a new life in Canada. Romantic
longing and the search for love are overriding themes.
We find out the characters’ backstories via video clips,
with performers speaking in their native language
(French, English, Chinese, or Spanish). For me, the
most effective communication of performers’ inner
lives was in a Chinese pole duet by William
Underwood and Héloïse Bourgeois, which expresses
their attempts to develop trust within an erotically
charged relationship. The production’s coup de théâtre
comes with the arrival of a beat-up car onstage: the
performers do acrobatic moves on, around, and even
through it, parkour-style. This thrillingly evokes urban
life as full of excitement, risk, and the unanticipated.
Other memorable circus skills demonstrations, whose
larger relevance to the theme and storylines are not yet
fully clear to me, include a pairs diabolo act by Song
Enmeng and Pan Shengnan; and Sabrina Aganier’s
aerial hoop number.
We found out in discussion with Snider and Tétreault
that they took inspiration for this production’s theme
and formal structure from movies such as Babel,
Crash, and Amores Perros, in which seemingly
unrelated lives end up intertwined (a format that film
theorist David Bordwell calls the network narrative). It
is not yet clear to me what the Intersection company is
trying to communicate through this criss-crossing
motif. That human lives are increasingly
interconnected in our globalized era is a
commonplace. Are they trying to question our
responsibilities to the many strangers whose paths we
cross on a daily basis; and if so, what do they feel such
responsibilities might be? Are they implying that
contingent events and seeming coincidences in fact
have deeper meanings, and if so, are they invoking
fate, spirituality, or something else? The creation
period for this show was rather short – 25 days – and I
expect that more time spent working on character and
relationship might allow for the themes and
representations to grow richer, and the meaning behind
the connections theme to become more resonant.
I also was struck by the conservatism of Intersection‘s
representation of gender and sexuality: every
relationship depicted was heterosexual, and overall,
stereotypes of strong, tortured man and vulnerable, (in
some cases literally!) flighty woman were reinforced.
Some circus experts argue that the history of freak
shows inevitably haunts any circus performance, so
that circus bodies are always-already queer and circus
Page 7
shows always-already alternative. It is challenging for
me, however, to associate 7 Doigts’ work with a
subversive, queer politics of difference. In both their
shows I’ve seen, attractive, fashionably dressed, and
dauntingly toned young people performed amazing,
cutting-edge circus skills while communicating
feelings and thoughts clearly intended for the
audiences to relate to. The freakish body was nowhere
present in these experiences, for me. I wonder: is the
increasingly popularity of circus necessarily or
inevitably going to mean a mainstreaming (a
straightening out, perhaps) of its representational
politics?
Barbu-Foire Electro-Trad is Cirque Alfonse’s third
show and finds them both building on and busting
loose from the attention-grabbing image they
cultivated in the first two. The men of Alfonse sport
thick beards, wear lumberjack shirts, and in past shows
have performed circus acts using objects found in the
wilderness: they juggle axes and do a Russian bars act
on actual lumber. The core of Alfonse is an extended
family from the Québec town of Saint-AlphonseRodriguez, and the company still creates its shows
there. But it’s important not to paint Alfonse as total
country bumpkins: part of their success stems from the
overlap of the hipster and lumberjack aesthetics, and
their hit show Timber! (which I saw a couple of years
ago) had something of a deadpan, ironic feel, as if they
were both celebrating their culture and letting us know
they didn’t take it too seriously.
In contrast to the family-friendly Timber!, Barbu is an
adults-only experience, an attempt to combine the
format and bawdiness of German-style cabaret with
circus acts and with Alfonse’s distinctive identity.
There are some impressive circus skills on display in
this show; it is at times, particularly in its increasingly
bonkers second act, extremely funny; and the live
music – a mix, as the title suggests, of traditional
Québec music with electronica – is brilliant. Overall,
though, I found it hard to understand where the show,
directed by Alain Francoeur, was coming from in
terms of tone: all the elements did not sit together
comfortably. In the first act, there is an attempt to
deliver a real cabaret show, featuring skilled circus
acts adapted to fit the low-ceilinged space, including
an extended roller skating number and Matias
Salmehano’s amazing juggling. The five male
performers are in their rural getups and adopt the
deadpan guise familiar from Timber! In the second act,
things shift considerably: the men wear only black
Speedo-style briefs and do increasingly ridiculous
stunts, like juggling ping-pong balls between them
using only their mouths. It all turned, somewhat
satisfyingly, into a giddy shared joke about the
impracticality and pointlessness of everything they
were doing (of circus itself?).
All of this was somewhat compromised, however, by
the show’s uncertain representation of women. Mostly
the two female circus performers serve as secondary
figures to male-led circus activity, including one of
them being the assistant in the classic put-the-lady-inthe-box-and-shove-blades-through-her magic trick,
which ends with the “big reveal” of her intact female
body wearing only pasties and briefs. The first act
ends with the two women, wearing sports bras and
briefs, doing a floor acrobatics act that turns into mud
wrestling when the female percussionist, dressed like a
dominatrix, pours glop on them and cracks a whip.
Their manner in this is deadpan, but this
communicates something different than the men’s first
act hipster-ironic demeanour. The women performed
something usually associated with the exploitation of
women for men’s erotic pleasure, and there was
nothing about them that indicated that they had agency
in the display or were enjoying it. This act would
perhaps work better if it came later in the show and
were played for humour – if the women acknowledged
the challenge and silliness of trying to do balancing
stunts and tricky holds while covered in mud. I was
also not sure what Alfonse were getting at by the
repeated gesture in the second act of the performers
(along with some randomly selected audience
members) waving rainbow streamers, rhythmicgymnastics style. It’s one thing to satirize macho
behaviour, which is what I think they’re trying to do in
the second half; but more work needs to be done to get
the show into a state where such a pro-LGBTQ gesture
comes off as more than token.
Chicago-based Midnight Circus is the first company
from
the
USA
to
visit
MONTRÉAL
COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE in its five-year history,
evidence of the relative underdevelopment of the
American circus scene. The company performs in its
own tent and has a folksy, likeable, somewhat
shambolic vibe. Like circuses of yore it is a
family-based enterprise: married couple Jeff and Julie
Jenkins, their nine-year-old son Max and six-year-old
daughter Samantha are the core of the company and all
perform in the show, along with their trained dog
Junebug. Small Tent…. Big Shoulders is a traditional,
one-ring, ringmaster-led circus for families – a series
of acts that doesn’t attempt any kind of narrative or
character development, but rather presents 5-7 minute
blasts of juggling, balancing, aerial, and other circus
acts by the Jenkinses and nine other performers.
DJ My Boy Elroy stands on a platform overlooking
the ring and plays recorded contemporary music that
provides considerable energy and an urban edge. A lot
Page 8
of pleasure for me in watching this show came from
observing how much the many young people in the
audience (there was a big group of day campers there,
as well as numerous families) enjoyed it, and from
admiring how good the Midnight Circus performers
are at working the crowd. That being said, at over two
hours (including intermission) the show is draggy, and
would probably work best as pared-back one-act.
The young French company Lapsus provides an
interesting contrast to Midnight Circus, in that their
production Six Pieds sur Terre (Six Feet on the
Ground) suffers a bit from an excess of artfulness.
There is no doubt of the high level of talent and
training of the company’s six artists, who attended
circus schools around France and whose skills are in
floor acrobatics, aerial holds, juggling, and unicycle.
They start to tell a wordless story of a group of lost
young souls trying to build a life together: they drag a
big pile of bricks onstage and, in an impressively short
amount of time construct a fabulously ornate Rube
Goldberg-type machine. There are some allusions in
the piece to this being a post-apocalyptic world, such
as when a motorized toy helicopter flies over piles of
rubble as if surveying a damaged city. Part of the
aesthetic of the show is working with a very limited
number of objects, but just as we’ve gotten used to the
idea that these will be only bricks and ropes, they add
in another element – eggshells – as the very skilled
unicyclist Jonathan Gagneux first tries to steer around
a floor full of shells and then plows all over them.
Again, there are some interesting potential ideas here
about preservation and destruction, but overall it’s
hard to see how it all fits together. Lapsus have a
likeable stage presence and their circus skills and
training are impressive; stronger dramaturgical and
directorial guidance might be useful in helping them
shape their ongoing efforts.
Alongside these productions we saw as a group, I went
along to see the free outdoor spectacular Babel Remix,
which played twice nightly throughout the festival in
the centre of Montréal. Less than a half an hour long
and performed by a cast of several dozen on a 55-foothigh scaffolding, this is a well-calculated and well-
executed piece of public entertainment (a reworking,
apparently, of a successful similar outdoor show from
last year). The performers are young, fit, and dressed
in boho-alternative garb (shirtless men in kilts; women
in tank tops and harem pants) that feels like a slightly
exaggerated version of Montréal urban youth chic.
Against a fun, loud contemporary music soundtrack
the performers swarm up the scaffolding; episodes of
group choreography are punctuated with flying trapeze
and Chinese pole acts. There was something unusual
and thrilling about watching the action on the top
platform of the set against the backdrop of the night
sky – the change of perspective made already risky
acts seem riskier. The company is male-dominated,
and most of the aerial derring-do is reserved for them,
with the women in supporting earthbound roles. If
Babel Remix is on the cards for MCC 2015, it would
be wonderful to see more attention paid to the
overturning of gender stereotypes.
Babel_Remix – Photo: Mathieu Létourneau
I hope En Piste, the Canada Council for the Arts, and
MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE extend
this circus residency programme in future years. There
is so much more to say about the burgeoning world of
circus arts and more work to do in getting brilliant
contemporary circus productions from Québec, Europe
and elsewhere circulating around the rest of North
America. Getting journalists and bloggers buzzing
about it is a great first step.
KAREN Fricker is Assistant Professor in Dramatic Arts at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, and cofounder of the Montréal Working Group on Circus. As a theatre critic she has written for The Guardian, The Irish
Times, and Irish Theatre Magazine, and has broadcast for the CBC, the BBC, and RTÉ.
Page 9
NE ME LAISSE PAS TOMBER
PAR MARION GERBIER
« En acrobatie on dit qu’on est perdu. C’est à dire
qu’on sait plus où c’est haut où c’est bas, si on est en
train de monter ou de tomber. Si, tomber quand même,
on s’en rend compte… Dans ces moments-là, j’ai
appris que si je faisais confiance à mon corps, à mes
réflexes, ça se passait bien. »
Présenté en quelques mots anecdotiques dans les
médias, Acrobates est une création en l’hommage de
Fabrice Champion, trapéziste cofondateur de la
compagnie de cirque aérien les Arts Sauts, rendu
tétraplégique suite à une chute en 2004 et dont la
disparition accidentelle3 est annoncée sept ans plus
tard d’une intoxication de plantes médicinales lors
d’un voyage initiatique au Pérou. Le projet artistique,
la démarche de l’équipe de conception et le rendu
scénique sont autrement plus ambitieux, approfondis
et spectaculaires. C’est d’emblée qu’en rencontre, le
metteur en scène Stéphane Ricordel (cofondateur de la
compagnie les Arts Sauts en 1993 et depuis 2009
codirecteur du théâtre Le Monfort avec sa conjointe
Laurence De Magalhaes) réfute l’élan initial
d’hommage, et décrit comment le spectacle s’est
imposé, puis progressivement développé en réaction
aux événements et au cheminement des participants.
Ainsi lorsque survient la mort de Fabrice, cela fait
plusieurs années qu’il fonctionne en mentorat et
cocréation avec Alexandre Fournier et Matias Pilet,
auprès desquels il explore des techniques de tétradanse
qui donneront entre autres sa dernière production
Totem de cirque en 2010. Parties de ces recherches
sont aussi documentées par Olivier Meyrou, vidéaste
se penchant alors sur les réflexions du trapéziste suite
au chamboulement de sa vie et de sa carrière par sa
paralysie. Brutalement orphelins dans leurs processus
créatifs en cours, ces artistes et proches du défunt
s’entendent donc sur la nécessité de prolonger
l’enseignement de Fabrice et leurs travaux, et ce après
une période de six mois de silence et d’isolement.
De ce fait, le spectacle n’est pas factuel, ni un récit de
conséquences, mais plutôt un parcours, un témoignage
vivant de l’encaissement physique des événements.
Cette notion de parcours ou trajectoire personnelle
s’exprime aussi bien par la rééducation après
3. Les mots soulignés contiennent des hyperliens.
l’accident pour le tétracrobate, par l’apprentissage du
métier d’acrobate pour les deux étudiants, par la
démarche de deuil pour tous les proches et concepteurs
du projet de spectacle, ainsi que par la découverte de
ces sujets et protagonistes pour le spectateur. Or en
filigrane
des
trajectoires
précédentes
qui
s’entrecroisent, se dessinent trois thématiques
majeures qui tressent la pièce : l’acrobatie, le deuil et –
pour la moins évidente peut-être mais la plus
essentielle – la transmission.
À l’origine du projet et de l’implication des différents
participants, la transmission investit toutes les
relations serrées qui unissent spécifiquement chaque
collaborateur à Fabrice et teinte son expérience du
deuil et sa conception de la vocation acrobatique. Elle
se situe également dans le partage de ces expériences
et conceptions, à la fois intimes et métaphysiques, au
public. Puisqu’il s’agit comme évoqué précédemment
de prolonger l’enseignement de Fabrice, de raviver sa
présence d’une certaine façon, tout en accédant à
l’acceptation de son absence, il était central que son
discours résonne, prenne forme dans le langage de
chaque artiste participant selon les compréhensions et
émotions individuelles, que tous s’approprient une part
de sens à y trouver. C’est pourquoi le documentaire
vidéo d’Olivier Meyrou, incluant des sessions de
travail de tétradanse, constitue la trame visuelle et
sonore du spectacle, redonne vie aux mots et aux
pensées du disparu, sous forme presque d’un legs,
d’une leçon d’attitude face à la mort autant qu’à
l’acrobatie.
La
composition
sonore
est
particulièrement chargée et forte, parce qu’il s’agit de
personnes centrales qui se confient dans des moments
d’extrême émotion et vulnérabilité, et parce que la
partition de sens a été scrupuleusement travaillée à la
manière
d’une
démonstration
philosophique
quasiment. Ce canevas minutieux de confessions et de
silences est poignant et semblable à la pièce du
compositeur Yves Daoust pour Splendeur d’une
courtisane de la compagnie Omnibus, donnant corps à
la confidence d’une escorte et à l’introspection de
toute une gamme d’émotions intimes. Au-delà de
l’enchaînement sémantique, des leitmotivs percutants
viennent pareillement ponctuer différentes phases
dramatiques avec un sens nouveau, soulignant des
étapes dans le processus de deuil et d’apprentissage
Page 10
acrobatique. Également très musicale, cette
construction dramaturgique intègre des ingrédients
secondaires concrets et symboliques (bruits de la
nature et balle de ping-pong, en référence aux passions
de Fabrice) de même que des contrastes de silence
pesant et d’explosions tonitruantes traduisant l’état
intérieur des proches concernés, leur révolte, leur perte
de repères ou leur obstination.
Une autre composante structurante du spectacle relève
des choix scénographiques précis, artistiquement
élaborés et audacieux. La pente en est l’élément
fondamental. D’une part, d’un point de vue
métaphorique, elle évoque l’épreuve sous tous ses
angles, physiques et psychologiques: la perte
d’équilibre, la chute, le glissement, la dépression,
autant qu’à l’inverse l’ascension, la progression, la
rémission et l’espoir d’un horizon et d’un après en
perspective du chemin parcouru. D’autre part elle
détermine la performance en plaçant les corps en
situation de difficulté, donnant à voir le vertige décrit
et ressenti, et par Fabrice suite à l’accident, et par ceux
qui restent dans leur pratique acrobatique et à travers
le deuil. En complément, c’est tout un dispositif
d’écrans mobiles et de surfaces modulables qui vient
contraindre la stabilité de l’environnement et
matérialiser les diverses couches de discours et de
conscience, l’éventail de perceptions entre réalité et
symbolique. L’utilisation de textures naturelles par le
biais des projections répond aux sons écologiques et
ajoute du piquant à l’imagerie du jeu d’équilibre des
acrobates, lorsqu’ils simulent des funambules sur des
branches
d’arbres par exemple. Un soin
impressionnant est enfin apporté aux éclairages et
contrastes clair-obscur qui accentuent les variations de
profondeur et la confusion des sens (choc émotionnel,
recherche de repères) qui transparaît dans les propos
enregistrés. Il en résulte un labyrinthe scénique, qui
illustre évidemment les obstacles à surmonter dans la
maîtrise acrobatique, et se révèle surtout un miroir
émotif des individus, se frayant difficilement un
chemin dans la vie pour fuir la mort ou reprendre le
dessus sur elle.
Bien que tous les éléments convoqués participent des
trois thématiques, on peut établir des associations
prépondérantes, soit la transmission par la voie de
l’archive vidéo (également sonore), et le deuil fouillé
par le biais du décor et du relief sculptural ainsi que
par le travail photographique d’apparition et
d’effacement. Cela place naturellement la recherche de
mouvement au service de la réflexion acrobatique.
Collaboration étroite entre Stéphane Ricordel et les
anciens étudiants de Fabrice, cette troisième portée de
la composition est de nature théâtrale et circassienne à
la fois, en écartant toutefois le recours à l’artifice pour
conserver le maximum d’authenticité, d’intuition et de
sensibilité. C’est là une autre prouesse du spectacle,
dont la matière principale est l’émotion et sa mémoire,
mais livrée entière à travers le corps - son
déplacement, son bruit et son image. Alexandre
Fournier et Matias Pilet incarnent alternativement les
sensations de Fabrice handicapé, ses conceptions de la
discipline, le mal-être de son esprit acrobate, puis ils
expriment la désertion de leurs propres forces, leur
chute et le trou noir de leur conscience, avant
d’invoquer avec humour et technicité la délicate
exploration de leur complicité et leur affirmation
individuelle en tant qu’acrobates. Leur pouvoir
d’expression est fascinant et bouleversant, il n’en
demeure pas moins d’une physicalité impressionnante,
ne sacrifiant rien de la performance technique sous
prétexte sentimental. Au contraire, l’originalité du
plateau incliné et le défi de son architecture mouvante,
tout comme l’omniprésence d’une semi-obscurité,
impliquent des compétences de concentration, de
suspension et d’apesanteur spectaculaires de retenue
de la part des interprètes. Quand par la suite ils
s’aventurent dans un registre plus dynamique, c’est
pour illustrer la dégringolade et la révolte intérieure,
des tentatives vaines faites de violence et d’échec, soit
des figures dangereuses et brutales en pratique. Enfin
leur accession à une condition d’acrobates plus
accomplis et leur travail de pair leur demande un
ajustement mutuel des qualités de porteur et de
voltigeur, pas nécessairement innées mais décidées par
leurs morphologies comparées, et leur périple conjoint
avec et sans Fabrice.
Sur le plan du discours, il est profondément instructif
de suivre le cheminement de Fabrice puisque celui-ci
donne ouvertement des clés sur la vocation
acrobatique, mais aussi sur le deuil de cette vocation à
l’éclairage de son accident, et par extension offre une
sorte de manuel pour ses étudiants en voie de devenir
adultes, et pour leur pratique d’acrobates et dans leur
apprentissage de la mort. L’attention portée à la
sélection des propos et à leur agencement à la fois
significatif, émotif et musical est, comme nous l’avons
précisé, le squelette à l’origine de la pièce, et en
quelque sorte son objectif de redonner toute sa valeur
à cette parole qui subsiste. Ce qui permet de
s’accomplir acrobate est en réalité une leçon plus
universelle de vie, qui passe entre autres par
l’expérience du risque, du danger, de la mort. Fabrice
en appelle ainsi à plusieurs postures primordiales pour
s’affranchir des limites, qu’elles soient physiques ou
psychiques. Tout d’abord, le corps doit se rendre
perméable aux forces extérieures, s’abandonner avec
un certain naturel aux influences et recevoir l’imprévu.
« Simplement laisser réagir le corps aux forces
Page 11
auxquelles il est soumis. » La tétraplégie a cependant
été un obstacle de taille, et malgré les efforts
admirables et touchants de tétradanse filmés, Fabrice
évoque l’agonie de son « acrobate intérieur », celui qui
ne peut plus s’exprimer physiquement ni entrer en
communion avec la nature et le plaisir d’en jouir. « Je
peux plus. Je peux plus marcher, je peux plus monter
les escaliers, je peux plus avoir d’orgasme, je peux
plus me promener dans les prés, je peux plus nager
dans les rivières, dans les lacs. » Devant cette impasse
et face à l’annonce du décès, Matias et Alex prennent
le relais de la narration pour décrire leur propre
écroulement brusque. « Je suis tombé par terre.
Comme une enclume. » Les mots de Fabrice
deviennent alors un modèle posthume d’espoir et de
rémission tandis qu’il explique que l’acrobatie n’est
pas le danger ou le risque mais l’agilité pour y faire
face, s’en sauver, s’en sortir. S’extraire de ses peurs,
se dépasser. « Tu t’mets en danger tu t’mets en
déséquilibre tu t’mets un peu en péril, mais l’acrobatie
elle vient te sauver. » De même lorsqu’est mentionné
le déséquilibre qui peut s’installer entre deux
complices d’acrobatie, celui qui porte et l’autre qui
vole, celui qui peut bouger et l’autre plus: « Si Alex il
me donne trop y’a un moment il… s’il me donne
beaucoup et que j’lui rends pas assez y’a un moment,
j’ai l’impression, il va plus vouloir me donner parce
que j’lui rends pas. » Le témoignage audio invite au
lâcher prise, à l’acceptation de ne pas savoir ce qui
subsistera, et à toutefois garder confiance, une
confiance aveugle et infinie en soi et l’autre. « Tu
décides de ne pas maîtriser les choses, pour que quand
elles viennent ce soit une surprise, et qu’elles te
touchent. » Et le plus magnifique est cette boucle,
lorsque la parole transmise de Fabrice aux étudiants
revient éclairer d’un jour différent l’épreuve de la
tétraplégie et l’après envisagé. « J’apprendrai à
dompter mon esprit au fur et à mesure que l’acrobate
mourra. »
La possibilité de transposer les pensées de Fabrice aux
deux niveaux du deuil et de l’acrobatie, et de
transmettre ainsi aux étudiants à la fois la passion du
métier, sa maîtrise, et l’élan nécessaire pour accepter
la succession au professeur, est déjà signe d’un degré
d’élaboration poussé de la création. Il ne s’agit ni d’un
cours ni d’un hommage, mais d’une traversée durant
laquelle l’un et l’autre – l'endeuillé, celui qui est
tombé, et l'acrobate, celui qui reste en équilibre – se
questionnent et se répondent. À cela s’ajoute une
dimension particulière d’intégration du public dans
l’aventure. Par le biais du rythme lent et entrecoupé,
des textures et de l’obscurité, et des morceaux vidéo
choisis, le spectateur est amené à se frayer lui-même
un chemin dans la confusion des sentiments, entre
intimité, didactique et performance. Il n’est ni
malmené ni confortablement assis, mais étonnamment
plongé dans cette ambiance opaque entre la passion et
le handicap, entre le malheur et le mieux. Le spectacle
impose ses choix esthétiques, l’acrobatie n’intervient
ouvertement que tard, et l’on se demande où mène
l’expédition. Ce n’est qu’une fois le chemin parcouru
qu’on en comprend le processus et son but. Expérience
initiatique par excellence, le spectateur est
personnellement convié à sentir le vide, les feuilles
fraîches et le déséquilibre des sens, le besoin de
s’appuyer sur une épaule réconfortante, de ressasser
les souvenirs, de répéter les leitmotivs et d’y déceler
un sens nouveau, éclairant. Et c’est parce que la pièce
ne lâche rien au confort de la représentation au
contraire, c’est parce qu’elle cherche toujours à tendre
ce lien entre le public et l’action sans passer par les
moyens habituels d’abattre le quatrième mur et
pénétrer les rangs, juste en communiquant le vertige et
l’émotion, qu’elle imprègne si sensiblement chacun.
Parmi les espaces d’ajustement du spectacle, il y a
certes les façons acrobatiques de se rendre d’un point
A à un point B, en résonance directe avec le sentiment
du performeur, et il y a aussi la durée des silences,
cette communication directe avec l’attention et la
compréhension du public. Au cœur du thème de
transmission.
Acrobates – Photo Hold Up Films & Christophe Raynaud De Lage
Sur la photo : Matias Pilet
Acrobates aborde des notions tout à fait centrales à la
discipline, telles que l’âme acrobate, le risque / la
chute / l’équilibre, la solidarité dans la configuration
porteur / voltigeur. L’angle de l’accident et l’analyse
du déséquilibre n’est pas sans rappeler l’aventure du
fildefériste français Antoine Rigot dans la création des
Colporteurs Le Fil sous la neige. L’approche est
totalement personnelle et anecdotique, mais le contenu
esquive absolument le mélodrame en poursuivant en
parallèle sa cible pédagogique. Surtout, le fait de ne
pas traiter à proprement dit de la mort ou de l’accident,
plutôt de leur encaissement dans le corps, du processus
Page 12
d’acceptation et de deuil qui s’ensuit, apporte une
certaine luminosité à l’ensemble, qui bourdonnerait
sinon d’une matière douloureuse et écrasante. Il s’agit
non pas d’un constat d’atterrement mais d’un combat,
d’une attitude active de résistance et de persistance.
Outre le respect et le soin qui sont visibles envers la
clarté de la pensée de Fabrice et de son souvenir, on
dénote une visée purement artistique du projet,
transversale à son contenu intime. Accédant à une
vérité et une maturité de leur discipline, les deux
acrobates livrent une prestation tout à fait captivante
de leur talent. Et plutôt qu’une démonstration de leur
capacité, ils s’engagent dans une exploration
dynamique de leur potentiel en construction.
Autrement dit, ils se découvrent et se poussent plus
loin, en même temps qu’ils s’ouvrent sur scène et l’un
à l’autre sur ce qui les a conduits jusqu’ici. Ils parlent
d’acrobatie pour illustrer leur rapport à Fabrice et son
héritage, de la même façon que Stéphane Ricordel
ambitionne une structure scénique qui transforme la
pratique acrobatique et instigue le développement du
spectacle, et qu’Olivier Meyrou revisite le montage de
son film pour en extraire une composition sonore
inédite et solidement articulée. Allant dans ce sens de
dépassement du sujet ou de son traitement par couches
interposées, il est notable que le spectacle ait évité la
redondance. Chaque langage – le mouvement, le son,
le film – dessert un message, une fonction
complémentaire des autres, se concentre sur un point
de focalisation particulier. Par exemple, le discours de
Fabrice en vidéo se teinte de tétracrobatie, soit de la
redéfinition de la discipline après la chute, tandis que
transposé dans la gestuelle et les figures opérées par
les interprètes, il évoque une autre chute, celle du
vertige à l’annonce de l’accident et de l’isolement dans
la pratique. Par conséquent plusieurs niveaux
d’entendement peuvent être nourris à la fois, selon une
même logique discursive guidée par la musique, et
déclinée dans les divers lexiques scéniques
(correspondant aux collaborateurs réunis).
Basé sur l'implication des proches de Fabrice en pleine
vulnérabilité et démarche d'introspection, le caractère
personnel de la création se perçoit tout en nuances,
dans les choix de lenteur, l’attention portée à la voix et
aux mots sélectionnés (le terme « déboussolé »), ainsi
que le travail de surimpression photographique et de
textures projetées. Il est également présent au travers
de détails qui marquent l’attachement du spectateur et
sont directement reliés au vécu des interprètes et
concepteurs: le ping-pong qui s’inscrit comme un
temps décompté ou une pensée obsédante dans la
trame sonore, et ce T-shirt que l’on réajuste d’un geste
tendre. L’engagement dans ce parcours de deuil
partagé implique des cadres naturels au projet. C’est
ainsi que les recherches en cours qui servent de
matière vivante à Acrobates, telles que la tétradanse
des deux élèves ou le documentaire d'Olivier Meyrou,
donneront lieu à des spectacles achevés dans un autre
contexte que celui-ci (respectivement Nos limites
dirigé par le chorégraphe Radhouane El Meddeb,
2013, et le film Acrobates, 2011). Traitant de
l’encaissement de la disparition du trapéziste et de
l’accomplissement acrobatique et adulte des
interprètes, ce spectacle ne pourra pas tourner
plusieurs années encore ni supporter un changement
de distribution puisque cela casserait complètement la
source de son authenticité et la force de son impulsion
qui rejoint si intimement le public. Outre ces
considérations sur les particularités contextuelles de
cette création, elle invite les spectateurs à une
expérience inédite et sensible en les plaçant au cœur
du parcours initiatique, vers plus de lumière et de
compréhension du métier acrobatique. Et cela par le
biais d’une construction esthétique complète et
originale, très contemporaine, et étonnamment
circassienne au final – à l’image de cette pente. Mais
rien de ce que l’on a l’habitude ni l’expectative de
voir, d’entendre, de ressentir. Une forme imposée
profondément par la mémoire de Fabrice Champion, et
qui insuffle à son tour son rythme et ses silences avec
un impressionnant pouvoir de communion.
« Tu veux être acrobate longtemps parce que t’as peur
de l’immobilité; l’immobilité c’est la mort. (…) Si
j’enlève l’acrobate qui est à l’intérieur, je sais pas
encore ce qui reste. Pour l’instant c’est l’acrobate qui
vit, tout le temps. »
MARION GERBIER
Oeuvrant en communication dans le domaine des arts vivants, notamment pour le Festival TransAmériques (FTA),
Marion Gerbier habite la métropole québécoise, dont elle suit avec passion l'agenda culturel foisonnant – spectacles,
expositions, concerts et performances. Elle collabore régulièrement comme critique de cirque avec DFDanse, le
magazine de la danse actuelle à Montréal.
Page 13
THE NEW NORMAL, SEEKING HUMAN EMOTIONS
AMID SUPERHUMAN FEATS AT MONTREAL
COMPLETEMENT CIRQUE
BY PATRICIA HARRIS
“We want to be real people on stage,” Les 7 Doigts de
la Main co-founder Samuel Tétreault told me last year
as I sat in a gymnasium watching company members’
work on hoops and ropes. Tétreault thought for a
moment before stating the obvious: “Real people who
can do extraordinary things.”
The Montréal-based company was formed in 2002 by
seven accomplished circus performers who wanted to
draw from their life experiences to explore universal
themes that would resonate with audiences. “We are
normal people with normal problems,” Tétreault said,
“normal problems that we transcend.”
Tétreault spoke of “breaking down the fourth wall,”
that boundary between a fictional work and its
audience first articulated by Enlightenment
philosopher Diderot. Writers and theatrical performers
have been crossing and recrossing that boundary for
centuries and many circus artists are taking up the
challenge as well – extricating their craft from the
realm of pure entertainment and spectacle to use their
bodies and skills to explore the range of human
emotions.
Yet the risk-taking athleticism that makes the circus
arts so potent may also create a divide between
performer and audience. By their very nature, the
circus arts face the unique challenge of taking the
audience beyond amazement (and a little envy if we
want to be perfectly honest) to a recognition of shared
humanity. How can performers make a connection
with audience members when their artistic vocabulary
is what most sets them apart?
I was contemplating that irony as the parade that
opened the fifth edition of the MONTREAL
COMPLETEMENT CiRQUE festival began to make
its rowdy, unruly way down rue St-Denis. Suddenly a
group of acrobats in red bodysuits paused from their
back flips and handstands to mingle with the
onlookers. One after another, four young men
approached and gave me a firm handshake, just like
their fathers probably taught them. Each looked me
square in the eye and grinned. At that moment they
seemed eminently approachable and more than a little
endearing. But I had to wonder if I would feel the
same connection when I sat in the audience and
watched them on the stage.
The short answer is sometimes yes, but not always.
For a longer answer, this paper recounts the
approaches of four of the companies in the festival to
draw me and my fellow audience members into the
worlds and emotions that they created on stage. I'm
not the best judge of the degree of difficulty or
virtuosity in specific circus skills. Instead, I was
looking most closely at the ways in which the overall
structure of each piece, and the individual
performances within it, resonated with the audience.
With apologies to post-structuralism's inherent
disregard for the artist, I am glad for any light that
circus practitioners can shed on their art. My
observations, therefore, are also informed by
interviews with circus producers, directors, and
performers.
According to Nadia Drouin, head of programming for
the TOHU Pavilion, the high-tech circular
performance space that presents circus year-round, one
of the goals of MONTREAL COMPLETEMENT
CiRQUE is to introduce audiences to the range and
variety of circus arts being practiced today. While
some companies are stretching the boundaries of the
art form, others, she said, are simply so good and so
charismatic that they must be seen. One of the other
goals of the festival, Drouin said only partly in jest, is
to make Montréal such a circus town that people walk
around wearing red plastic noses. In that playful spirit,
the organizers decided to make the 2014 festival more
family oriented.
Small Tent...Big Shoulders: In the Tradition
Chicago-based Midnight Circus, the first American
company invited to perform at the festival, caters to a
family audience, but does not tailor its material
specifically for children. “We make our work
Page 14
accessible for kids,” said Julie Jenkins, a classically
trained stage actress who formed the company in 1995
with her husband Jeff Jenkins, a former Ringling
circus clown. “But we don't write for kids. We write
for adults. When we went to kids' shows we were
bored.”
Performed in a single ring under a blue - and purple striped big top and orchestrated by ringmaster Jeff,
Small Tent...Big Shoulders channels traditional circus
in both form and straightforward intent to enchant and
delight without the burden of layers of meaning.
“Circus sometimes becomes too experimental,” said
Julie. “We want people to see the power and beauty of
what a human body can do.”
bridge to the audience. That's especially true in a
nation like Québec, where, according to Carabinier
Lépine, even some rural teenagers value and
appreciate traditional music. For its third production,
Barbu-Foire Électro Trad, Cirque Alfonse gave the
Franco-Gaelic country dance music an urban, electro
beat and placed it in the setting of a Montréal fair at
the beginning of the 20th century.
The show certainly delivered with a succession of acts
including a lovely aerial silk routine performed to
“This Bitter Earth,” a rola bola balance board juggling
act that had the audience holding its collective breath,
and a tightwire act with a performer in high heels. The
feats were balanced by plenty of pratfalls and the
appearance of the “amazing and adorable” family dog
Junebug. Rather than raising the kids in the audience
to adult perceptions, Midnight Circus ultimately
evoked a childlike sense of wonder in children and
adults alike.
The company's adherence to the family circus tradition
of incorporating children into the show was ultimately
the most affecting (even if perhaps unintended) aspect
of the production. For the closing act, daughter
Samantha Jenkins, age 6, performed on a hoop with
focused determination and considerable poise. All the
while, mother Julie stood nearby to keep Samantha
safe while still letting her soar.
“We think it's beautiful to see a raw young person at
the beginning of their journey,” said Jeff. Watching a
young performer discover her potential and begin to
create her identity as an artist made me look at the
more mature and accomplished artists in a different
light. They had, after all, once also been novices
striving toward mastery of their craft.
Barbu-Foire Électro Trad: Provincial Revival
Even in an art form evolving as quickly as circus,
tradition exerts a strong pull. While Midnight Circus is
rooted in family circus, Cirque Alfonse celebrates the
sometimes quirky traditional culture of its native land.
“We are the most Québec of the Québec-based
circuses,” said Antoine Carabinier Lépine, one of the
founders of the company, which mounted its first
production in 2006.
It's too easy and obvious, of course, to rely solely on
shared heritage and cultural references to build a
Barbu Foire électrotrad – Photo: Andrei Kalamkarov
From left to right : Matias Salmenaho, Antoine CarabinierLépine, Jacques Schneider and Jonathan Casaubon
Caribinier Lépine explained that the company wanted
to create the sense of “entertainment, sparkle, wow!”
that delighted folks in those simpler times. For today's
more jaded and overstimulated audiences, performers
amped up the experience by melding contemporary
European cabaret with a certain bawdy Québec
slapstick that needed no translation. They also
exploited the small stage and tight quarters (perhaps
too tight for those who were spattered with mud from
the wrestling act) to mimic the jostling intimacy of a
crowd of people standing shoulder to shoulder. That
proximity enhanced the suspense and impact of circus
acts – including acrobats on bicycles, roller skates, and
teeterboards – that seemed to strike a sometimes
Page 15
precarious balance between precision acrobatics and
exuberant physicality. The troupe's obvious delight in
their abilities was infectious and it wasn't a big leap to
imagine the joy and delight of fairgoers of a century
ago who simply wanted to see something amazing that
would lift them out of their daily lives.
configuration. They included a wardrobe with
costumes to try on, an attic where discarded objects
released the aroma of mothballs, a cafe where drinks
were sold, and a home where a performer balanced
upside down on an overstuffed chair while mixing
crepe batter with her foot.
It's often said of circus that the accomplishments of the
performers inspire us all to strive toward our own
more modest and mundane goals. Cirque Alfonse put a
nice twist on that notion when even the somewhat
flabby male members of the company appeared in
Speedos near the end of the performance. They
certainly got a good laugh, but they also gave audience
members (many of whom were probably vowing to
start dieting and exercising the next day) permission to
relax. Unattainable perfection, they seemed to suggest,
is hardly the point.
“The first experience in the theater is that you see
someone, touch something, or cross other audience
members on multiple occasions,” said Snider.
“Circus is dangerous, it's funny, and it can be poetic,”
Carabinier Lépine had said earlier during rehearsal.
“We're not always perfect. You can see us shaking,
sometimes we miss, and we try again.” It's a message,
he said, that resonates with audience members. “If you
have dreams, just try it. If you fail, just try again.”
It was a good state of mind for a show built around the
twin notions of chance encounters and the road not
taken. “We are confronted with choices that define
what we do, and encounters that change the course of
our life,” said Tétreault.
Intersection: An Immersive Experience
Since its founding in 2002, Les 7 Doigts de la Main
has grappled with the question of how best to connect
performer and audience – a bond that company
members consider essential for expressing ideas and
emotions that illuminate the complexities of the
human condition.
“When the performer is 60 feet in the air above the
audience it's a constant battle to create that bridge,”
said company member Gypsy Snider. To bring the
performers down to earth, so to speak, the company
set its first piece (Loft) in a loft-like space where
audience members encountered the artists in their
underwear.
For MONTREAL COMPLETEMENT CiRQUE,
Snider and Samuel Tétreault tried to recreate that
intimacy in the much larger TOHU space with an
“immersive theater experience” called Intersection. On
opening night, with one performer sidelined by injury,
the piece did not seem to be fully realized. But it's
hard not to admire the company's commitment to
involve and engage the audience.
Even before the performance begins, “we want to get
the audience involved,” said Tétreault. “We don't want
them just sitting in a seat where they are protected and
safe.” For Intersection, audience members were
encouraged to enter the theater early to explore four
“stations” set at the edges of the crossbar stage
I found the stations themselves less engaging than the
simple act of milling around in the expectant crowd
going from one to the next. Along the way, “pop-up”
acts – an acrobatic routine in a bathtub or a political
demonstration complete with clanging pots and pans –
made me feel that anything might happen as the
evening progressed.
For the performance itself, each artist created a
fictional character with a rich back story and hopes
and dreams for the future. “I wanted the actors to get
out of themselves, to think about basic human needs,”
said Snider. The aim was a performance that would
make audience members see their own experiences
and concerns reflected in the artistry onstage.
As the title of the piece suggests, the stories were most
explicit and resonant when the characters crossed
paths. The tentative bond between aimless bartender
Stanley and the newly widowed “simple housewife”
Charlotte, for example, found expression in a pole duet
full of all-too-familiar ups and downs. Although duet
work requires full trust and cooperation, the
performers managed to let their fictional characters
pull away and, at points, even reject each other.
Videos expanded on each character's narrative. As a
non-French speaker, I missed a level of detail that
might have brought greater cohesion to the narrative
and made me more invested in each character's fate.
These missteps shouldn't discourage the company
from continuing to explore the rich range of emotion
that the circus arts can convey. “There's a level of
humanity in the circus that's not found in other
performance art,” said Snider.
Acrobates: The Heart of Flight
Nowhere is that humanity on such raw display as in
Acrobates, an hour-long meditation on what it means
to have – and then lose – the ability to fly.
Page 16
The intensely personal piece is directed by Stéphane
Ricordel, co-director of Théâtre Monfort in Paris. It is
inspired by his best friend and fellow trapeze artist
Fabrice Champion, who was paralyzed as a result of a
rehearsal accident and later died. It is performed by
young acrobats Alexandre Fournier and Matias Pilet,
who found a gifted mentor in Champion, an artist
trapped in what Ricordel calls “a sleeping body.”
It would have been easy to use his friend's story to
draw sympathy from the audience, but that would have
been superficial and ultimately exploitative. Instead,
Ricordel chose to cut through the skin, muscle, and
bone of acrobatic performance to reveal the beating
heart of the calling that he and Champion shared. “I
wanted to speak about acrobatic meaning,” he
explained. Ricordel also wanted to explore the notion
of friendship. It's a rich subject when seen through the
lens of artists who must depend on each other for their
physical safety, while at the same time, “accept the
smell, the breath, and the sweat of the other.”
In the opening scenes, the two performers work their
way up and down a steep slope on the stage, while the
audience sees and hears Champion in video footage. “I
can't walk anymore. I can't climb stairs. I can't have an
orgasm,” he says as he adds up his physical losses. But
he has not lost his identify. “The spirit within an
acrobatic movement is what makes you an acrobat,”
he says. “The spirit is stronger than anything else.”
Eventually the performers find a level, more secure
space and tentatively practice their craft. They build to
a joyous abandon that underscores their strength and
virtuosity. At several points, the artists pause so that
Pilet can gently straighten Fournier's shirt – a gesture
that was common between Ricordel and Champion.
“We wanted silences in the show,” said Ricordel. “It's
the time when everything can happen. When the
audience is really quiet, you can push a bit more.”
With tender economy, that intimate gesture captures
the bond between performers who can soar to extreme
heights and push the limits of their bodies because
they so fully trust and respect each other.
Acrobates achieves its extraordinary emotional power
by revealing the deepest identities – and probably
deepest fears – of performers whose need to express
themselves lead them to take great personal risks. By
laying bare what sets them apart from the rest of us as
performers and human beings, the artists plumb a
depth of grief, loss, and determination that crosses all
barriers.
As they mourn their friend – and discover and
celebrate his spirit in themselves – Pilet and Fournier
allow us to dream about what it means to be
extraordinary. The circus can offer no greater gift.
PATRICIA HARRIS is a journalist and critic living and working in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Among others, she has
been writing for the Boston Globe and the Washington Post.
RESONANCES FROM THE ARCHAIC AND THE
HISTORICAL CIRCUS
MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CIRQUE 2014
BY TONY MONTAGUE
When Junebug the pit-bull hurled herself through the
curtain and into the ring with the other performers in
Small Tent... Big Shoulders there was no avoiding my
hot-button issue – animals in the circus. Is this crazy
dog something to applaud? Is she relevant for the 21 st
century, or an embarrassing hangover from one of the
darkest areas of the circus psyche? For a second I felt
confused. Then, as a dedicated and experienced catwrangler, my instinct took over. I looked at the tail…
Junebug’s was swinging very happily. She clearly
Page 17
relished being on stage with her family and friends,
chewing madly on the hat, going through her routine
with the hoops. It was hard for anyone not to enjoy the
canine star’s moment in the spotlight too.
As a circus performer with Chicago’s Midnight
Circus, Junebug has much to tell us. She’s around four
years old, trained by co-founder Jeff Jenkins as part of
a pit-bull rehabilitation program that he operates in the
Windy City. The work requires a close connection
with some of the most disadvantaged youths and tough
communities of the city’s South Side. Once a starving
stray, Junebug is now a pet so cherished that after she
swallowed a peach-pit two months ago Midnight
Circus spent $15,000 of its hard-earned money on
surgery to save her life.
Junebug and Jeff are instances of one of the most
ancient and enduring elements of the circus – the
display of a close communication and affective
relationship between human and animal, which
became debased as the ability to make wild beasts
perform through coercion. But the ability to
understand and speak the ‘language’ of ‘animals is
extremely ancient, a survival practice of nomadic
hunter-gatherer societies for tens of thousands of
years. People are hard-wired to respond to such an
ancient skill, whether or not it’s seen in the new circus
as a vestige of the old one best forgotten.
MONTREAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE (MCC)
presented an eclectic palette of approaches to circus
from neo-traditional to cutting-edge contemporary. All
carried resonances from the roots and origins of the
circus arts. Observing these echoes is not an exercise
in nostalgia but a way of helping us understand how
and why certain acts, décors, lightings and effects are
enduringly successful in reaching audiences through
the collective unconscious.
Pieds Sur Terre the performers of French company
Lapsus at one point created an interconnected series of
structures made with small wooden brick-blocks,
which briefly ‘came to life‘ when a pile at one end was
knocked over, triggering a domino effect. More
significantly, the slope in Le Montfort’s Acrobates
became almost another being during the performance.
Most of the time it appeared mausoleum-like, a hard
shiny black slab, but twice came alive in vegetative
form through projections.
The artists were obliged to ‘understand the language’
of the steep 43-degree slope through their feet. The
slope even altered its shape, when part of its middle
section was removed. Multiple interpretations are
possible for the resulting gap, but among the strongest
are surely the entrance to the Earth, to the Underworld
and its secrets, to the unconscious and pre-conscious
mind. Once again, audiences are hard-wired to
respond to the darkened space, into which we project
our emotions and especially fears and anxieties more
readily than onto any brightly-lit stage.
Acrobates touched directly on one of the circus’s own
deepest fears: the serious injury or death of an artist. In
ancient Mediterranean and West Asian cultures the
acrobat was a mediator between heaven and earth – a
dangerous role to play. His or her power derived from
that proximity to the transformation. There is much
about an acrobat’s life that touches on the sacrificial –
not just giving up a more regular existence to become
an itinerant and usually impoverished artist, but the
potential sacrifice of one’s body and selfhood to
human error or mechanical malfunction.
They lead us to essences, and the exploration of
archetypes.
The popularity and success of equestrian circus
companies today, such as Cavalia in Canada or
Bartabas in France, reflects in part a deep desire by the
artist and the audience – perhaps by the animal as well
- to bridge this gap between horse and human, and
forge a common ‘centaur’ language. In a similar way
certain artists ‘animate’ inanimate objects – a piece of
equipment, a prop, a décor, even the stage set –
establishing an unusually close relationship with
them.
The Chinese pole in Les 7 Doigts de la Main’s
production Intersection was animated by Héloïse
Bourgeois and William Underwood who used it to
express their stormy (onstage) relationship. In Six
Babel_Remix – Photo: Renald Laurin
Babel Remix, conceived and directed by Anthony
Venisse, bore echoes from mythology in its very title.
The five-story scaffold on Place Émilie-Gamelin
suggested among other things the “colossal images of
wicker-work” in which the Druids placed victims
before setting these towers alight, as referred to by
J.G. Frazer in the celebrated The Golden Bough, a
Study in Magic and Religion. Seeing a lonely figure
Page 18
atop the Chinese pole at the climax of Babel Remix,
and the pinnacle of the 55-foot set, sent a frisson
through the audience, an unconscious reminder of
sacrifices of the fittest and finest young people – as in
the Minoan (Cretan) myth of the Minotaur.
There was also much swarming on the lower levels of
the scaffold at Babel Remix, and the clear sense of a
clan (hence the Scottish kilts), a tribe, a mob, a large
company. This leads back to the circus in London in
the summer of 1789 which mounted two separate
productions of the storming of the Bastille within a
few weeks of the event – first at Astley’s, then more
lavishly at the Royal Circus. Both were very
successful and influential. The early modern circus
was closely tied to contemporary events and human
dramas, and well-understood large group dynamics
and choreography.
A sacrificial victim is not necessarily unwilling. The
ritual might be a great honour or something suffered
for the greater good. In Acrobates Fabrice, like all
high-flying performers, knew he was potentially
giving up his life itself to what he most loved to do.
His fall was all the more moving because we didn’t
see it. As in Greek drama we did not see the event,
which was a kind of human sacrifice to the gods,
though we might not use such a phrase to describe it.
Acrobats and audience – both as individual and group
created a brief yet intense bond.
Fabrice, as we learned, was a sublime artist who
seemed to defy natural law and truly became himself
when performing, and air-borne. Acrobates took us
straight to the emotional core of circus and legendary,
mythic material. The long opening, with its penumbra
and brooding score suggested a cave-like space. And
in this almost subterranean environment a ritual took
place that engaged us all: Fabrice who performed
‘miraculous’ feats, broke his neck, became paraplegic,
and died was brought back, re-animated before us. We
saw him in the brilliant documentary clips, felt his
presence constantly through his absence, and the
emotions of his friends and colleagues. He lived again
– if only in virtual form, and for the space of 75
minutes.
The technical aspects of Acrobates and the artistry of
Alexandre Fournier and Matias Pilet were
magnificent, but what reached the audience on a
deeper level than most circus shows is the hot core of
the work, which is in a real sense shamanic. This
connection is brought out at the end of Fabrice’s life,
when he went to Peru in search of a shaman to help
heal his violently-disrupted selfhood through the
ingestion of ayahuasca.
The production at MCC of Le Soir des Monstres, a
one-man show by Étienne Saglio, merits mention here,
although not seen by all Circus Stories participants. It
too took place in a penumbra with sparse and very
specific illumination. The audience was drawn in, and
unconsciously prepared for the transformation of
objects into monsters and apparitions. When Saglio cut
one of the reptilian ‘beasts’ into small pieces and they
appeared to come back to life and multiply, he was rearticulating one of the most ancient stories, with
variants in one form or another in cultures across the
world. It’s perhaps most familiar to us in the
Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence in Walt Disney’s
classic animation Fantasia. The theme is of the abuse
of knowledge and power, and the consequences - and
it has a strikingly contemporary geo-political
resonance.
At the end of Le Soir des Monstres Saglio went to the
back of the stage where his ghostly image underwent a
series of transmogrifications that suggested the
unsettling portraits of Francis Bacon [an allusion
which he privately confirmed] as well as shamanic
shape-shifting. This was definitely not a family show,
and would benefit from editing. The ‘shamanic’ core
proved compelling nonetheless.
Étienne Saglio in Le soir des monstres – Photo: Johann Fournier
The shaman in his guise as artificer provided the
central theme of the new Cirque du Soleil production
Kurios – Cabinet des Curiosités he becomes an
eccentric collector, inventor, and circus impresario
who releases the forces of a largely benign
Underworld, and overturns norms. Kurios’s
steampunk aesthetic evokes Victorian inventions,
vaudevillian entertainment, and the circus of the
Barnum and Bailey era. I could happily dispense with
the faux conjoined-twins, but the tiny performer
Antanina Satsura who emerged from the divingcapsule belly of another character was a delight.
Initially I felt the same confusion as for Junebug. I
Page 19
have no interest in freak shows, but can readily see
how miraculous and wonderful Satsura must be for
children – is she an adult, or a wizened child? Their
imaginations are lit by a simple circus trope.
In Western culture ‘The World Turned Upside Down’
is one of the most charged symbols, in image and
metaphor. During the Festival of Fools, popular
throughout the Middles Ages and Renaissance in
much of Europe, many relationships were reversed or
upended for one day, when the Lord of Misrule, Le
Prince des Sots, held sway. There was a clear nod to
the world turned upside down in the astonishing
vertical mirror-image chair-balancing in Kurios. An
extraordinary feat technically, it also pointed to the
heart of circus as a topsy-turvy place where natural
laws and normal relations, including values, no longer
apply or are reversed.
In contrast to the ‘magical’ creations of Kurios,
Gravity and other Myths explored the human side of
this essential component of circus. Part of the thrill of
A Simple Space was to see men and women who
needed no props or artistic equipment at all to make
their show – circus pared to bare essentials – using
only their bodies to make the structures and props for
the elaborate and complex acrobatic work. And
musician Elliot Zoerner’s brilliant body-percussion
solo rekindled one of the most archaic and universal
routines in entertainment.
Tradition in the performing arts is often misunderstood
as something fixed and rigid yet it’s in a constant state
of mutation. It survives by maintaining a balance
between past inheritance and the changes that
inevitably come through contact with other traditions
and the creation of hybrids. There was much in Cirque
Alphonse’s Barbu-Foire Electro Trad that – with a
roguish and populist Quebecois wink - alluded to the
past. The show represents a Rabelaisian approach to
circus, with a large appetite for satire and provocation
and a sense of chaos lurking close to the high degree
of coordination and control necessary for any circus
show.
The riotous Underworld is not far from the surface of
Barbu, always threatening to break through, and at
times doing so comically – as in the ‘three hairy guys
going primitive’ video sequence. The strongman or
strongwoman has been one of the foundations of the
circus since its dawn, and this Atlas-figure who
supports a great weight on his or her shoulders is now
a part of the identity of most super-fit circus
performers in contemporary troupes. Barbu played
with this archetype, subverting while at the same time
celebrating it – a trick in itself.
There were two sides to Barbu, corresponding to the
two halves of the evening. In the first act the
inspiration – as explained to us earlier by Antoine
Carabinier Lépine – drew on the park where at the end
of the 19th century Montrealers who reveled in the
feats of Louis Cyr [1863-1912] and other famous
strongmen went for a Sunday stroll, as well as
fairgrounds, the circus of the 1880s, and the rollerskater bars of Montreal in the 1980s. In the second act
the tone and spirit tilted sharply towards burlesque,
from Geneviève Morin’s pasties to Matias Salmenaho
and Jacques Schneider’s grotesquery. It was the
Underworld briefly removing its underwear, and
claiming its place at the heart of Barbu.
The comic and joyous vulgarity had a darker side
however. Seeing Schneider first suspended from a bag,
then subjected to simulated blows and punishment
certainly didn’t work for me as an Amnesty
International supporter, although I can appreciate the
power of the image, and that everybody recognized it
as comic theatre in which nobody got hurt. Other
aspects of Barbu provoked similar responses in the
Circus Stories group. But I loved the rollercoaster
circus cabaret ride of the company who pitched an
element of Monty Python-style anarchy into the tiny
ring.
The set at the TOHU for Les 7 Doigts’s Intersection
was powerful in its primal symbolism: a cross at the
centre of the ring that extended out into the wings.
This simple configuration pre-dates Christianity of
course, combining the qualities of the ring, a shape
with no ‘hierarchy’ where every point is equal, with
those of the cross, the meeting of perpendicular lines.
We may see these as roads, culture, people who meet,
trade, and exchange – and undergo consequent change,
even transformation. And as Gypsy Snider reminded
us, the circular space means that the audience sees
itself on the other side, and gains a sense of wholeness
and community.
The four-part division of the circle in Intersection
suggested not only the four directions but the four
winds found in many First Nations cultures, four
primary colours, and the basic structure of mandalas
from Tibet to Teotihuacan in Ancient Mexico. This is
not to suggest that anyone in the 7 Doigts team was
thinking along such lines, but to maintain that the
simple cross-and-circle configuration works incredibly
well with audiences of all cultures because it’s so
universal, and ingrained in the psyche. Circularity and
focus help provide a sense of integrity, which most
spectators look for at a show.
Page 20
Harlequinade, the madcap chase sequence in most of
the pantomimes that concluded major circus shows
from the late 1780s well into the 19th century. And it
carried through to the early cinema of Charlie Chaplin,
Buster Keaton, and the Keystone Cops and into
cartoon animations where characters are often pursued
by dogs or hunters. Noting this element is not to
diminish the originality and artistry of Les 7 Doigts in
Intersection, but to see how Gypsy Snider and
colleagues are reimagining a very old circus-arts
tradition. Growing up around the Pickle Family Circus
and the San Francisco Mime Troupe she would have
been well aware of such historical aspects of her art.
*
From bottom to top: Matias Plaul and William Underwood
Intersection also rang bells from the late 18th century
circus. The unconventional beginning, with audience
members exploring the four stations and the central
stage area, walking and talking freely, echoed the way
people would have strolled between attractions at a big
fair or one of the many pleasure gardens, popular well
into the Victorian era. At the climax of the work the
high-speed acrobatics on, though, and over the derelict
car is the contemporary equivalent of the
*
*
At the Circus Now party held on the final Saturday
night of MCC it was intriguing to see that the black
tank-tops on sale to raise funds for the organization
read: ‘Circus is my spirit animal’. And as we were led
to the party through the building each small group was
asked to choose an animal clan identity. This didn’t go
anywhere, but was another indication that there’s
something ancient in the contemporary circus air.
Finding it doesn’t entail a wilderness-survival trip or
the ingestion of red mushrooms with white spots, just
recognizing, understanding, and re-imagining some of
the unconscious cultural baggage that we bear, even if
we want to deny or distance ourselves from it.
Performances, and the response to them, become
richer and stronger through an awareness of the
contemporary circus’s deep and universal roots.
TONY MONTAGUE is a writer and freelance journalist, writing mainly for The Georgia Straight weekly in Vancouver,
and fRoots (folk and world music) monthly, as well as occasional pieces for the Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun,
National Post, and other publications. He's currently researching the Early Circus for an eventual production and
book.
Page 21
L’HOMO SPECTACULAR
PAR MAGALIE MORIN
L’homme est toute une bibitte. Une bestiole assez
extraordinaire merci. Un être époustouflant.
Spectaculaire, même. C’est en plein cœur d’une
résidence de journalistes culturels organisée par En
piste (le Regroupement national des arts du cirque)
que j’en ai pris la pleine mesure. Dans le cadre de la 5e
édition du festival MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT
CiRQUE. C’est plongée jusqu’aux yeux dans le
monde circassien douze heures par jour pendant quatre
jours que j’ai eu l’occasion de côtoyer des gens
d’exception. Mais des gens d’exception qui ne forment
pas nécessairement une élite à part, endoctrinée ou
refermée sur elle-même. Des créatures exceptionnelles
dans tout ce qu’elles ont d’humain. Je vous présente
l’homo spectacular.
La veille du début officiel de la résidence, j’étais
assise dans le gazon avec mon amoureux à la place
Émilie-Gamelin pour la première de Babel_Remix. La
seule chose que je retienne des notes que j’ai prises
dans mon calepin, c’est cette phrase-là : « C’est beau,
la brise caniculaire dans les tissus souples des
costumes amples. C’est beau, la musique, les
acrobates, les danseurs, les musiciens, le public ; tous
ces gens réunis. »
Les Minutes complètement cirque – Photo : Raynald Laurin
Évidemment, comme bien d’autres affaires, le cirque
est rassembleur. Il rassemble surtout pour son éclat.
C’est la totale, le cirque. Ça vient souvent de tous
bords tous côtés, c’est impressionnant, on y voit des
prouesses surhumaines, on déglutit de travers, les yeux
écarquouilles. On comprend pas. On comprend pas ce
qui se passe, on comprend pas comment c’est possible,
on comprend pas pourquoi ces gens-là font ce qu’ils
font. Ça dépasse l’entendement, de voir tant de force,
d’agilité, de souplesse, de puissance, dans la
confiance, et l’abandon. Ça donne le vertige, tant de
virtuosité.
Cette virtuosité n’est pas le lot d’humanoïdessuperhéros. Elle est le fruit d’une vie de sacrifices,
d’entraînement, de choix ; elle comporte une grande
part d’émotivité, de partage, de respect, de
questionnements. Le cirque est un mode de vie en soi.
Et j’ai eu envie de faire écho aux propos de Gypsy
Snider, une des fondatrices des 7 doigts de la main : il
faut arrêter la magie. C’est la réalité. C’est l’humanité.
C’est tout. Elle disait aussi : « Au cirque, tu ne peux
pas prétendre, tricher, faker ; ce qui se passe est réel. »
Parcours
On met des années de formation, d’entraînement, de
dur labeur, de blessures, physiques ou d’orgueil pour
être bien préparé à confronter tous les dangers du
métier. Pour Stéphane Ricordel, metteur en scène du
superbe Acrobates de la compagnie Le Monfort,
l’acrobate n’est pas automatiquement un artiste. Il peut
le devenir, éventuellement. Mais il peut très bien aussi
demeurer un excellent technicien, polyvalent comme
ils le sont tous.
Parce qu’au cours de leur apprentissage, à l’École
nationale de cirque (ÉNC), par exemple, les jeunes
doivent apprendre à pratiquer de tout (acrobaties au
sol, manipulation, équilibre, jeu, acrobaties aériennes)
et à se spécialiser dans l’une ou l’autre des disciplines,
où ils se devront d’exceller. C’est ce que les
compagnies cherchent lorsqu’elles embauchent, même
si « l’école travaille pour les étudiants, pas pour les
compagnies », affirme Marc Lalonde, directeur de
l’ÉNC, très fier que ses acrobates sortants trouvent
rapidement du travail ou partent leur propre
compagnie. C’est parce qu’ils reçoivent tout un
package : en plus de l’acrobatie et des cours
traditionnels du collégial (philo, français, anglais), les
jeunes ont au programme : anatomie, sécurité, carrière,
entraînement
(général,
spécialisé,
flexibilité,
souplesse), jeu, séances chez le physio… Les diplômés
en sortent archicomplets, autonomes, conscients,
guidés. Patrick Leroux, un chercheur passionné du
Page 22
Montreal Working Group on Circus Research, qualifie
même les artistes de cirque de soldats !
Esprit de communauté
Sauf qu’un soldat, ça ne travaille jamais seul, et
l’acrobate de cirque non plus. De ses origines où le
cirque traditionnel était très familial, vivait dans une
espèce de culture du secret, en nomade, et se donnait
en spectacle devant un public tous azimuts, le cirque
qu’on pourrait qualifier de plus contemporain a besoin
de rassembler, de ressembler et de faire participer. La
notion de communauté m’est apparue comme très
forte, omniprésente, au cours de mon grand bain dans
le monde du cirque. La force de cette communauté
s’apparente à celle d’une famille, unie dans les bons et
les moins bons moments, où tous mettent la main à la
pâte, s’investissent, se soutiennent, mais se
contredisent aussi. C’est fort en crime bine une famille
qui se tient, coûte que coûte !
Je pense à la compagnie Midnight Circus, de Chicago,
qui présentait sous chapiteau, sur le site de la TOHU,
Small Tent Big Shoulders. Au-delà du show très
américain qu’elle nous a présenté, il y avait cette
grande famille, très investie, dévouée. Entre eux, oui,
certes. Ils roulent leur bosse ensemble depuis plusieurs
années, on and off. Mais envers les autres, aussi. À
travers leur moyen d’expression qu’est le cirque, ils
entertainent, c’est sûr, ils nous montrent du wow, on
s’y attend, c’est un peu échevelé, très cirque
traditionnel, mais derrière tout ça, il y a une équipe du
tonnerre, enthousiaste, allumée, très fière – et avec
raison – qui donne et redonne et redonne encore.
Depuis plusieurs années, Midnight Circus se produit
dans les parcs de Chicago pour une somme modique et
distribue les montants amassés pour le réaménagement
des espaces verts, contribuant à l’assainissement des
quartiers moins avantagés de leur ville des vents.
Ramenant aussi le cirque à une dimension plus sociale,
comme c’était le cas dans les années 70 – « Circus is
the people’s art ! », a clamé Julie Jenkins,
cofondatrice. Ils sont passionnés, ils ont eu envie de
reconnecter l’action avec le public, qu’ils jugeaient
trop poli, ils avaient besoin que le spectateur participe
au spectacle, avec son énergie, que chacun y trouve
vraiment son compte, que ce soit un véritable échange.
Et dire que ces gens-là répètent dans leur garage !
On est loin du Cirque du Soleil, avec ses quartiers
généraux, qui abritent quelque 1500 travailleurs, en
plus des 2500 autres disséminés à travers la planète!
Plus près, on a la TOHU (fondée il y a 10 ans par En
Piste, le Cirque du Soleil et l’ÉNC), qui table sur trois
grands fondements : l’environnement, la communauté
et le cirque. En engageant des jeunes des
communautés culturelles du quartier Saint-Michel, en
cultivant sur place les produits de son bistro, en
travaillant à la revitalisation de l’ancienne carrière
Miron, en récupérant l’eau de pluie, en installant des
ruches urbaines, en gérant la température intérieure
des bâtiments et en redistribuant la fraîcheur ou la
chaleur dans ses locaux – et ce ne sont que quelques
exemples –, la TOHU existe par et pour la
communauté. Elle démontre, à petite échelle, que tout
est possible. C’est épatant. Là, encore : entraide,
respect, partage, intégration.
Ça rejoint tout à fait la base du cirque, un processus
collectif, une idée de communauté. On l’a évoqué dans
Six pieds sur terre, de la jeune compagnie française
Lapsus. Les six interprètes, avec la prémisse d’un
lendemain post apocalyptique, jouent sur la
construction et la déconstruction. Ou comment un
groupe d’individus peut se reconnecter d’une part avec
eux-mêmes et se connecter d’autre part entre eux pour
rebâtir le monde. La force du groupe laisse des failles
certaines, et elles se trouvent dans les faiblesses et les
fragilités de chacun. Pour Lapsus, c’est de là que
viennent ou viendront les émotions, quelles qu’elles
soient. Pendant une heure ils ont joué, avec plaisir,
amour fraternel ; ils ont cherché quoi construire.
Comment le construire. Et pourquoi. Mais ensemble,
et de façon ludique.
Humain
Et comme dans n’importe quel jeu, il arrive qu’on se
trompe. Personne n’est à l’abri de l’erreur, ou de
l’échec. Au-delà de la force physique, mentale, de
l’entraînement et de la persévérance, il y a les
imperfections, les tremblements, la sueur, le doute, la
chute, parfois ou souvent. Antoine Caribinier-Lépine,
rencontré à quelques minutes de la générale de BarbuFoire Électro Trad du Cirque Alfonse, était
visiblement stressé par sa première, le lendemain.
Mais en même temps très zen : « Tu essaies, tu te
trompes, tu recommences, et tu recommences
encore ! » C’est ça la vie. Pour tout le monde. Le corps
a ses limites, l’humain sa vulnérabilité et sa fragilité
malgré toute la virtuosité dont il peut faire preuve.
L’acrobate est un corps qui parle, qui repousse ses
limites, curieux, confiant ou dans l’incertitude ; il a
son histoire.
Et au cirque, personne n’est là pour juger. J’ai entendu
plusieurs intervenants nous faire part de leur plaisir de
travailler dans un milieu où il y a très peu de
compétition. Il existe au cirque une notion
d’individualité et de respect de chacun, de ses
compétences et de ses limites. J’oserai avancer peutêtre une certaine compréhension intrinsèque de tous
les enjeux qu’ils vivent, du risque calculé auquel ils
Page 23
s’exposent chaque jour, du niveau de danger qu’ils
confrontent et dépassent sans relâche? Comme le
disait Gypsy, « il y a un degré d’humanité dans le
cirque qu’on ne peut pas atteindre avec les autres
formes d’art de la scène. » Et Julie Jenkins, de
Midnight Circus, abonde dans le même sens : « Je n’ai
pas de plaisir à regarder les autres risquer leur vie.
J’aime voir la puissance et la beauté de ce que le corps
humain est capable de faire. » C’est justement ce qui
est fascinant. C’est ce qui est magnifique.
Risques
Pour certains, le cirque se résume à une part
d’entertainment et une part de danger. Pour d’autres,
l’équation ressemble plutôt à danger + poésie +
spectacle. D’autres encore voient le cirque comme la
parfaite combinaison entre la force et l’équilibre. Je
suis de ceux qui considèrent qu’on parle plutôt de
prise de risque, de virtuosité et d’athlètes de haut
niveau.
Dans le long entretien que Gypsy nous a accordé, elle
nous confiait que la peur existe toujours. Et qu’il faut
la transcender. Elle nous parlait des risques chaque
fois calculés. Des décisions qui doivent se prendre tôt,
question sécurité, parce que safety first, sinon on
n’avance pas. Et il faut s’entraîner sans relâche.
Chaque jour ces choix sont difficiles. Pour elle, si tu
ne le sens pas, tu ne le fais pas. C’est tout. Il faut être
dans le réel. Des choix difficiles à faire, donc, mais
intelligents. Et c’est là que réside la différence entre
une carrière et la fin d’une trajectoire peut-être
naissante. Elle nous en parlait parce qu’ils ont dû
prendre la décision de retirer une acrobate
d’Intersection. Elle s’était blessée. Elle aurait pu faire
la semaine de représentations prévue, mais c’est
probablement sa carrière qu’on aurait jouée. Le jour de
la première, ils ont donc revu toutes les interventions
de l’acrobate en question, et les ont extraites du
spectacle. J’aurais aimé pouvoir discuter avec elle.
Savoir comment ça se passait pour elle. Comment elle
le vivait.
Le risque, les artistes de cirque le vivent tous les jours,
dans toutes les disciplines. Ils y sont formés, entraînés,
coachés. Des imprévus surviennent quand même. Des
parcours sont interrompus. Des corps – ou des vies –,
brisées. Acrobates en traite avec justesse, émotion,
réalisme, humanité. Pourtant, le metteur en scène,
Stéphane Ricordel, dans sa vision des choses, nous a
confié ne jamais penser aux accidents. Il a même
avoué que s’il faisait autrement, ça ne fonctionnerait
pas. Aujourd’hui codirecteur d’un théâtre à Paris, cet
ancien catcher au trapèze volant a perdu son meilleur
ami, un flyer. « Tu penses que t’es unique, que tu vas
trouver une solution, que t’es un surhomme ! ». Avec
Acrobates, il a voulu faire un spectacle sur l’amitié,
sujet très peu exploité selon lui dans les arts de la
scène. Il a bien dû admettre que c’était devenu une
ode, un hommage à son ami disparu. Et à l’acrobate,
qui vit toujours en lui, même s’il ne « pratique » plus
le métier, même si ça n’est plus physique. Mais ça
n’est pas que physique. Être acrobate, c’est une façon
de vivre, de penser.
Il a bien admis aussi que le spectacle était une sorte de
thérapie. Pour lui, pour les jeunes qui l’interprètent,
pour lesquels son ami Fabrice était un véritable
mentor, et pour leur copain cinéaste, qui avait
commencé à tourner un documentaire sur lui.
Ensemble, ils ont juste voulu parler de Fabrice, du
bouddhisme, qu’il pratiquait, de la nature et de ses
sons, des arbres, des mangroves, du ping-pong, de
l’eau. Toutes des choses qu’il aimait.
Et ils ont aussi parlé de tendresse, de douleur, de
soutien, de douceur, de deuil, d’amour, de remises en
question, de doute, de sensibilité, d’équilibre, de
choix, de confrontation, d’engagement, de dévotion…
Et de l’acrobate, comme tel, de son besoin de
s’exprimer. C’est bel et bien à travers son art que
l’artiste de cirque dit ce qu’il a à dire. Sur bande audio,
on entend Patrice, tétraplégique, dire : « Je suis un
acrobate. Si je ne peux plus être acrobate, qu’est-ce
qui reste ? Ne plus être acrobate, c’est être immobile.
Et l’immobilité, c’est la mort. »
Sur scène, les deux acrobates qui portent le spectacle
vivent plutôt une naissance. D’acrobates, ils
deviennent artistes. Leur dialogue corporel est un
baume. Mais il aura aussi été rude, douloureux ; leur
parcours, ardu, troublé. La proximité crée une relation
très forte, très intime. On y brise les frontières entre
cirque, théâtre physique, thérapie, gymnastique, danse.
Ça a de quoi de cinématographique, aussi. Un paysage
où l’acrobatie est dansée.
Émotions
Ricordel pense avoir créé un show universel. Parce
que les émotions sont universelles ; elles sont
humaines. Celle qu’on éprouve longtemps dans
Acrobates, c’est l’inconfort, qui fait partie intégrante
du show, de la dramaturgie. Comme ce désir, ce
besoin pour les silences, aussi, qui étaient nécessaires.
Ricordel rappelle que c’est souvent dans ces moments
où on pense qu’il ne se passe rien que tout arrive. Le
malaise habilement dosé et organisé témoigne d’une
évolution dans l’évocation du chemin de la douleur
qu’ils ont parcouru, vers la résilience. On gagne la
lumière avec eux, dans un processus d’une précision
chirurgicale autant que poétique.
Page 24
Quelqu’un disait, je ne me rappelle plus qui, au cours
de la résidence, « when you give it away, then you
know you can do better ». C’est une question de
détachement, de conscience, de persévérance, et aussi
de lâcher prise. Savoir se laisser aller pour passer à
travers – la difficulté, la peur, les épreuves –, et
devenir meilleur. Le metteur en scène a voulu mettre
ses performeurs en danger, en leur imposant une
contrainte. Ils évoluent sur un plan incliné, une pente
de 43 % qui, chaque jour de représentation, demeure
une difficulté, à travailler en douceur. Transcender
l’obstacle, la peur, pour transcender l’émotion.
Le jeune guide qui nous a fait faire le tour guidé du
site de la TOHU en accéléré expliquait aux
anglophones l’origine du mot, de l’expression tohubohu, et j’ai beaucoup aimé sa façon, très simple, mais
imagée, de le représenter : il disait que le tohu-bohu,
c’était le chaos. Mais le chaos avec des émotions.
Dramaturgie et intégration
Pour organiser ce chaos, beaucoup de compagnies
misent sur une trame narrative dans la construction de
leur spectacle plutôt que de se contenter de présenter
des numéros les uns à la suite des autres. Ça
correspond aussi à ce qu’une partie du public
demande, et comme le cirque est un langage
international, qu’il abolit les frontières, repousse
constamment les limites, il tente aussi de plus en plus
souvent de parler à son public en le faisant participer.
Un peu à l’exemple de bien des compagnies
européennes qui travaillent sans direction artistique,
Les 7 doigts de la main fonctionnent en création
individuelle et collective. À la base de leur processus
créatif, il y a cette fascination pour l’humain, la
personne, qui existe, et qui prend des risques.
L’acrobate qui se raconte dans une confession
(numéro), qui exprime ce qu’il veut, son but, ce qu’il a
à dire. Il prend position. C’est réel. Il peut parvenir ou
pas à créer un pont vers le spectateur, afin qu’il puisse
voir, toucher, sentir son monde. Gypsy n’insiste pas
sur l’explication d’un numéro. Elle considère que le
cirque a une théâtralité instinctive, implicite.
Pour Intersection, le script de base n’était pas écrit, ne
pouvait pas l’être, tant que la distribution n’était pas
complétée. C’est ensemble qu’ils ont construit le
spectacle, un peu à la manière d’un film choral. Ils
voulaient briser le quatrième mur pour que le public
voie d’où viennent les performeurs, ce qu’eux voient.
Ils voulaient amener le public à s’identifier à eux, à
leurs personnages. Lui montrer qu’il n’y a pas de
différence entre eux et les spectateurs. Les faire
circuler dans l’espace, les décors, les toucher. Se
croiser à l’intersection, au centre. Se voir, disparaître,
se retrouver plus loin, se reconnaître, interagir, choisir.
Comme les gens qui croisent nos vies avec ou sans
impact, ils ont tenté de nous connecter entre nous et
avec eux, en nous impliquant pour la première
demi-heure dans un déambulatoire urbain aux
intersections virtuelles.
Partage
Au chapitre des connexions, il existe, en périphérie de
la pratique comme telle de l’art du cirque, tout un
réseau de professionnels chevronnés – et tout autant
passionnés. (Je revois Nadia Drouin, chef de la
programmation de la TOHU, s’exclamer, applaudir,
les yeux ronds – une vraie gamine ! – pendant Small
Tent Big Shoulders, et je trouve ça émouvant.) Ces
humains-là aussi sont au cœur du cirque, de sa
démarche, et sont tout autant spectaculaires. Ils
cherchent à comprendre, questionner, s’entraider. Ils
ont besoin de partager, de transmettre, de conserver.
Ils sont la mémoire collective.
Et ils ont fait appel à nous, journalistes, critiques,
blogueurs, rédacteurs du nord-est des États-Unis, du
Canada et du Québec pour amorcer une discussion qui
inclurait tout le monde. Un échange. Le but avoué de
la résidence : créer une communauté journalistique
plus au fait de ce qui se fait au cirque, de comment ça
se passe, des enjeux, nous mettre en contact avec tout
ça, et de l’intérieur. Pour Ricordel, nous étions « the
most important people they need to meet », parce
qu’ils ont besoin de nous pour faire parler d’eux, se
faire entendre. Samuel Tétreault, cofondateur des 7
doigts et président du conseil d’administration d’En
Piste a même employé le verbe contaminer ! Nous
étions donc des cobayes : malgré le succès de ce genre
d’initiative en Europe, nous avons participé il y a deux
semaines à une première nord-américaine. Nous avons
été plus que choyés de faire partie de cette résidence
dans la capitale mondiale des arts du cirque. La table
est mise ; le dialogue est ouvert. Longue vie à Circus
Stories !
MAGALIE MORIN collabore principalement au webzine Sors-tu.ca, et on a pu la lire également sur le blogue de La
Vitrine culturelle, et au Nightlife.ca. Elle œuvre en communications et en rédaction dans le domaine culturel depuis
près de 10 ans et habite à Montréal, Québec.
Page 25
MATERIAL CONCEPT IN CIRCUS ART
BY SARAH MUEHLBAUER
MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE 2014.
There is no place I’d rather be. I want to start this bit
of context and critique by introducing myself, as I feel
my background greatly influences my opinion, and
any criticism given is only meant to add one voice to a
healthy dialogue surrounding art and circus. I have
been asked specifically to speak of the shows selected
by the En Piste cultural journalism residency, a
wonderful inaugural-year program that I am so
thankful to have been part of.
I am a life-long writer and current performing circus
artist from the States. My university education came
through Visual Art where I earned my bachelors in
painting. Toward the end of that degree, I moved into
time-based media and performance/ installation, which
I pursued through and beyond my Masters — first
working with modern dancers, and then with circus.
My physical connection to this work came through 12
years of youth gymnastics, and my last 6 years of
piecemeal but committed circus training, mostly in
aerial.
I consider myself a practicing artist across a wide
variety of media, choosing means for the sake of
integrating material and concept. As McLuhan said,
the medium is the message — or at least we accept
that it forms a part of the language we receive and
interpret when analyzing a work of art.
To expose my biases and explain the topic of my
piece: I am most interested in contemporary avantgarde approaches. I’m a demanding audience on
technical skill — but I value conceptual development
even higher, and look for work that speaks beyond
spectacular values (though in appropriate context, I
support that it is rightly chosen and valuable).
Sometimes I play devil’s advocate, and I’m often more
critical of shows and companies that have the highest
potential, because I want circus so badly to be
presented in its truest and highest state — which is a
constant state of emerging.
I deeply respect the community that has dedicated
itself to creation in this field, and this festival in
particular. With all that said, please take this account
into context with your own first-hand opinion and
experience, as well as any other feedback you may
hear.
Material Concept in Circus Art — MONTREAL
COMPLETEMENT CiRQUE 2014
Intersection by Les 7 Doigts de la Main. This was the
first show of the festival that I had the honor to see —
on its premier night, and knowing full well the
company’s incredible work and reputation, as well as
their status as home-town heroes. I’d seen Traces and
Sequence 8, both technically immaculate and tight in
concept according to their artistic goals. The standard
was high, and walking into TOHU, the bar was lifted
higher yet, as they presented an ambitious setinstallation that brought audience members into a
scaled-up, interactive domestic space crossed with a
set of “roads”, i.e. our point of “Intersection”.
I appreciate the details—from small photographs and
tchotchkes, to floating doorways and makeshift rooms,
down to the voyeuristic phone recording that exposed
a breakup in-progress. You may have missed that last
bit if you didn’t pick up the ringing phone — but
these sorts of plotted out, unique encounters helped
heighten the “specialness” of individual experience,
and formed a two-way creative intimacy between
audiences and the work as well as with each other.
Sporadic performance during that ambulatory halfhour seemed to allude to future happenings. The air
was fun and exciting, and once the audience was
called to be seated, performers broke into a pots-andpans rebellion — which I must admit as a non-French
speaker, had to be translated to me and explained for
its historicity. With that knowledge given, I was
surprised and pleased to see such a specific political
event being pulled on stage, even if I were somewhat
confused about its link to the rest of the piece.
**DISCLAIMER** On the night of the premier, postshow, it was revealed that a main performer was
injured/ absent that night, and that Intersection was
therefore re-configured to temporarily remove her — a
lot of work, executed on an incredibly short timeframe. I’m sure this task was immensely difficult, and
I admire and respect 7 Doigts commitment and ability
to do so, while still executing a high-level show. I have
found it difficult to accurately critique an incomplete
viewing, and have done my best in the following text
to give credit according to what I saw and imagine the
piece to be in its entirety.
Page 26
Next comes the major transition of the work —
audience turned back into seated spectator, and the
intricate set was largely left behind for the “crossroads” where the rest of the performance took place.
The concept of Intersection was clear and simple, yet
poised for complexity — fitting the nature of human
experience, fleeting interaction and relationship. Mock
video interviews with the cast were given throughout,
but proved for me less powerful messages — less
authentic than the real-life objects we’d literally had
our hands on moments earlier.
Such is often the problem with video — it exists at a
remove, the screen too familiar, too mediated. When
playing with such a variety of elements, it is
challenging to weigh and integrate complex pieces
fluidly, and for me this video fell short of what it could
have provided. From my perspective, this was for lack
of depth, not formal reasons, as those felt suited to the
assemblage style aesthetic.
In moving forward, there were stunning highlights of
technical prowess as is always the case with 7 Doigts.
There were some bits that lead me along a narrative
path I liked, but in certain cases I questioned the
choice of apparatus and its relationship to the content
and character of the scene.
Perhaps the most exciting and directly referential
apparatus chosen was the group-acro + Chinese pole
act created around a real car that was pushed onto the
crafted street. A spontaneous high-energy piece, this
came close to the end, and transitioned to a more
delicate antipodism act. While beautiful in parts, and
while I intellectually understood its completion of a
circular narrative linked with the character’s intro and
abstractly echoed in the form of the umbrella —
overall I felt it confused the energy and left me
looking for an absent punctuation mark at the end of
the show.
As an overall impression, due I’m sure in some part to
the necessary re-workings, much of the character
development felt a bit “fresh”, and I believe this piece
will take some time to pass from impressive technical
craftwork into the more human-feeling story that I
believe each act proposes to invest in. I have yet to
see, in that case, whether the ambitious setup further
enhances or problematizes that desire for integration
— between spectator and performer, audience and
environment, acrobatic form and human story. I would
here like to emphasize that for 7 Doigts in particular,
my demands are high because the company is stunning
and capable, and because they are playing with so
many interesting elements, I simply want to see them
as effective as possible.
In complement and contrast, although it was not
shown during the specified residency period, I want to
briefly discuss Krin Haglund’s solo show The RendezVous, which was also on stage at the festival. Here we
have another domestic setting, but this solo show takes
up minimal set and props with high usage, clearly
accepting and playing off the traditional stage for what
it is. Character and audience interact masterfully — in
fact I would argue this active presence far outweighs
any other element, although there was plenty of real
circus skill involved. A much different show of course
— Krin is a comedienne extraordinaire, and the piece
is hilarious to the point of tears at times. I believe this
to be fairly widely accepted, for the audience I was
part of, and her “accomplices”, i.e. those lucky folks
selected for inclusion in bits on stage.
Waiting for a date that never shows, Krin cleverly
knits together a bizarre, perhaps surreal, juxtaposition
of images and acts, and ordinary yet transformed
objects — rendering a character portrait that embodies
the frenzy, hope, and disappointment in awaiting a
suitor. We are presented with such a creative heroine
that one is left to wonder whether she needs a suitor at
all. Clearly as a performer she can stand-alone. I
admire her mastery over so many skills, the
responsiveness she has to her audience, and the
vulnerability she takes on in creating such an
interactive plot. This kind of on-the-fly humor is
obviously a timely and well-crafted skill that requires
instantaneous connection and trust with strangers, hard
to accomplish on stage or in life. Quite often, one
needs only a single look from Haglund to get the
point, which is usually accompanied by a good belly
laugh.
Toward a much more serious plot, the duo piece
Acrobates was — by my assessment and seemingly
agreed upon by the whole of those I’ve spoken with —
simply immaculate, cinematic, moving, highly skillful,
yet economical in its artistic decisions — its use of
film and light, movement, and the architecture of the
stage. True, I’m usually a fan for a clean, minimalist
aesthetic and existential plotline… but while a large
part of circus’s success in communication comes
through its affective visceral response — this was
true to a much higher degree for me here. I held it in
my chest for days, and in fact still carry it with me.
Turning back to the topic of authenticity, it was both
felt and later revealed how integrated the film aspects
were in this true-life story, this beautiful and tragic set
of moments surrounding identity, gain and loss of
“ability”, human relationship and support, love and
bereavement. At this point I fail to locate an accurate
term to classify the piece, or to call it just a “show”
since it is clearly part of a continuum that both
Page 27
precedes and extends past the short time that we spent
with the performers on stage. This powerful emotional
connection is what transmits a real feeling of
redemption — certainly for us as viewers, and I
imagine for the artists as well.
The sense of story, while moving in itself, goes
beyond its specific circumstance and characters into
the universalizing aspects of death, enhanced by a
strong and clean aesthetic. To begin with, the show is
built around a sloping stage, which mirrors challenges
in partnership and trust, as well as the Sisyphean
struggle of Fabrice in recovering spirit and identity as,
or as not, an acrobat — a simple human. Choice use of
projection turns the slope into a textured nature scene,
playful for its use of scale, another point of “lightness”
in this weighty piece. Another thoughtful image is
seen in the floating and fragmented screens, which
drop down to break up film of the injured acrobat’s
conspicuously absent, disunited body.
Somewhere mid-way through the journey, a void
forms in the middle of the slope, accompanied by a
low-lit, physically stripped and writhing dance-like
descent into the low points of coping with trauma.
Interestingly this struggle is being communicated
through the body of the uninjured, presumably as a
mirror response to his friend’s pain, and just prior to
the revelation of his death. A sense of foreshadowing
is apparent.
I notice I have difficulty pinning down specific acts.
The fluidity between media, movement, and narrative
are a mark of the show’s success, creating a series of
waves on which I rise and fall continuously. Within
that expanse, I suppose two sections stand out —
firstly an acrobatic solo by Matias Pilet in which he
masterfully and repeatedly executes difficult “tricks”
with a loose body. Tension arises between form and
non-form — embodying the will, drive, and force to
execute or hold together, paired with the weakness,
affect, and unavoidable human response that disrupt
that will. It feels incredibly effective and extremely
conflicted, and somehow the full weight of the show
seemed to be carried within a single trick of this
sequence.
Then there is the final scene — a more straight
forward duo-acro piece, which provides our release
and redemption, both in recognizing the specific goals
of the “act”, and in showing the power and tenderness
of partnership that lasts, and in fact builds, through
and beyond such a series of difficult times. Past the
satisfying tricks (*notably quite a physical challenge
designed for the end of a show), we see small gestures,
the fixing of a shirt for example, which ground back to
common experience.
Yet again, the work transcends its specific story, so
clearly about acrobats, and so clearly not.
It is hard to move from a conversation about Acrobates
to really anything else — but for that reason I’ll
present a short assessment of Cirque Alfonse BarbuFoire Electro Trad because there is no direct
correlation I can draw, aside from the use of filmic
landscape applied toward extremely different ends.
The show may have its controversial elements (read:
not everybody appreciates female mud wrestling in a
circus show) but all in all I felt it was a high-energy,
bizarre and effective mash-up of tradition and well…
anything but. It helps that I like electronic music, and
beautiful nature shots which rhythmically dictate my
response fairly equally when weighed with the show’s
circus content. Those circus bits had their ups and
downs, but as a whole it seemed there was genuine
ingenuity on stage, plenty of bizarre surprises, and for
every bit that didn’t “work” or that I felt wasn’t “for
me” (as in my taste) — these pieces had their
audience, the energy kept on, the atmosphere
encouraged a drink or two, and where I wasn’t
enamored with the stage happenings, I had music and
video to catch my focus and keep me entertained. A
good time was had by all. Or at least most.
I hear the arguments against the mud act — but at the
same time make the assumption that the show was fun
to be part of, and as a group creation, I also apply
some liberty in thinking the women involved would
not have done the act if they felt it was personally
transgressive. To me, it didn’t seem overly sexualized.
That said, the act didn’t appear extremely wellinvested in its sense of movement, so perhaps that is a
result of some mixed feelings, or perhaps not — but
either way, I accepted that the act wasn’t targeting me
as an audience member, and in the context of that
room, I didn’t think much about it past that.
The show carried on in surprising ways, and on the
plus side of the spectrum… Who doesn’t like a discoball Cyr act? Barbu had the kind of balance between
logic and absurdity that seemed appropriate to its
venue and intentions — this show was a rock ‘n roll
good time. Different than many of the shows I
mentioned earlier, I did not seek a continuous plotline,
nor did I need one — gags and imagery gave me
threads to follow. Even if they drove off in random
directions, these ideas as well as the circus choices
showed real inventiveness and I found it refreshing.
On to a show that I mostly didn’t like, and I am sad to
say this because I wanted to like it. I thought that
Lapsus Six Pieds sur Terre was underdeveloped.
Dropping bombs like war and emptiness,
construction/de-construction — these are dense topics
Page 28
I will philosophize on for eternity, and I felt they were
dropped on stage and never carried forward. I think
this happens often in post-modern creation — there is
this idea that the viewer is an active contributor to the
work, and one wants to leave the concepts “open” so
that viewers assign their own narrative meaning. The
problem is — if one is not given enough art or concept
to push against, then nothing happens. I felt this as a
general impression of the show. If we are going to cocreate meaning, I need your side of it.
There were certainly glimmers here and there that
made me think it was coming. The Rube Goldberg
device and the tall tower-fall showed potential towards
the beginning. The male acrobat/flyer in the jumpsuit
had a charming presence and some real skill in
movement, and he certainly sold me on a few things.
Aside from that, I felt there was hardly relationship
between acrobatic skill displays and their use in plot or
concept. The eggshells lost their sense of fragility at a
point, and weren’t terribly visually impactful for me,
nor were the blocks, though they ranked significantly
higher. I discussed with a few others how we felt the
show could’ve benefitted from being housed in a
smaller theater, and I think that would have made a
difference in my sense of the objects’ impact. All-inall, I don’t doubt this group will carry on to make
more developed work, there is certainly something
there — but for this show, I was searching for more
commitment to their own ideas.
On to the Americans! Midnight Circus Small
Tent…Big Shoulders. Of course I have a soft spot for
this, considering they are the first US company to
perform at this festival, and in fact opened on July 4th,
Independence Day. A topic I’ve touched on earlier in
some respects is that I appreciate quite a lot of
different circus styles, and I evaluate a show’s
“success” by trying to meet them on their own terms
of expectation, intention, and what I’ll call style of
connection. The shows I respond to well can have
vastly different looks, content, purpose, and by certain
standards “success”. In the case of Midnight Circus, I
was presented with what I’d call a well-balanced show
and set of values.
Coming from the States, and with knowledge of the
Chicago area and its likely audience, this piece felt
like a perfect family-style show that echoes back to its
Ringling predecessors and serves well its community.
“Perfect” in this case doesn’t need to refer to what
some might lust after for high-level technical skill —
though they certainly provided a number of quality
acts, silks in particular standing out above the rest. In
this case I am looking for a match in enthusiasm and
energy, choice of music (I appreciated the DJ, as well
as the live songs), skill in performance (not just
technical, but in delivery of character), and audience
response — which was loud and spirited.
Jan Damm in Small Tent Big Shoulders
Photo Mathieu Létourneau
As an aside, I have a real appreciation for this
company’s acceptance at the festival, which validates
in some way that the US is stepping up. While this
may not seem such a big deal to many here in
Montreal, we in the States have a particularly
challenging landscape for circus creation, and this is a
mile-marker on our mountain climb. Individuals have
made it happen, but group work is next to impossible
for lack of resources, scattered and costly training, and
a cultural void when it comes to valuing live theater.
Despite these circumstances, Midnight Circus pulled it
off, and did so while generously giving back to their
local community, and I applaud them for it.
With all these thoughts, I leave it to you to consider
the value of each of these shows, and ask what it is
that is worthwhile in circus. I think there are many
different ideas of worth, style, and form, and in the
end I am just glad it’s all happening. For every critical
comment, there is an overwhelming wealth of
masterful techniques, intriguing concepts, and worldsaving potential. Circus can save us all, if we let it.
SARAH MUEHLBAUER is a performing circus artist and freelance writer living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Among
others, she has been writing for Circus Now’s website.
Page 29
DAZZLED BY DARKNESS
THE CONTEMPORARY CIRCUS TAKES ON GRIEF AND LOSS
BY ANDREA MUSTAIN
On an unseasonably sultry Wednesday evening, a
chorus of shrill yips and shrieks began to fill the air
along a busy strip of Montreal's Rue Saint-Denis. It
sounded as though an army of tiny Dr. Seuss
characters, zapped suddenly into the human
dimension, was swarming southward, streaming past
the hurly-burly mix of beer bars and chain coffee
shops, sushi joints and pizzerias and theaters.
A sticky crowd, toting ice cream cones and daubing
sweaty upper lips, turned expectantly toward the
sound. They'd been waiting for this. The circus was in
town.
And not just the circus — circuses. Many of them.
The source of the high-pitched whooping appeared a
split-second later, as a human wave of bodies crashed
into view. Impeccably built and wearing what, in a
Mad Max universe, might serve as uniforms for an
aquatic assault — red hot pants (tops for the girls
only), black straps wrapped around one leg, and black
head gear — they plunged in among the spectators,
moving together with the frenetic momentum of a
murmuration of starlings.
what one might expect. Wacky, whimsical, physically
astounding, in-your-face, and generally outlandish,
Adonis-like men lifted bendy women into gravitydefying poses, and winged ladies and painted clowns
teased grown-ups and children alike. Balloons were
handed out. Over the rowdy sound of Balkan music —
boisterous violins and accordions played atop a
slow-moving double-decker bus — clapping and
laughter followed the motley mix of performers. The
crowd was pleased. We'd gotten what we came for.
We'd been amazed. People were smiling.
Two days into the festival, on Friday evening, a
somber crowd filed down the stairs of Usine C, a
theater housed in an old factory, its brick walls and
towering smokestack still intact. People spoke in
hushed tones. A tall man in a fashionable t-shirt wore
a stunned expression, as tears ran down his cheeks. He
was barrel-chested, with Popeye-worthy forearms, and
he was audibly sniffling. He ran a massive hand
beneath his nose; another man put a gentle arm around
his shoulders.
What happened? Where was the gaiety on display at
the parade? For heaven's sake, why were all these
people so sad?
Welcome to the modern circus. If you're expecting
peanuts and clowns, the smell of the greasepaint, the
roar of the crowds, think again. At the contemporary
circus, you might need to bring along a hankie.
Big money in the big top
The unruly entrance marked the opening of
MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE 2014,
Montreal's fifth international circus festival. For the
next 12 days, 14 circus troupes from four countries
would perform at venues around the city.
One need not be a circus expert to know that times
have changed from the days when roving big tops set
up in open pastures just a short drive from Main
Street. These days, in the United States, at least, you're
more likely to find the circus in an over airconditioned theater along the Vegas Strip. Yes,
Ringling Brothers still make the rounds, but there's a
new, and far bigger game in town that has come to
define what many Americans think of as the modern
circus.
The manic throng of circus warriors was simply the
vanguard of a parade making its way down SaintDenis. The spectacle that followed hewed closely to
And it all started here, in Montréal. Cirque du Soleil,
architect of the reigning circus aesthetic, along with
the vast majority of North America's circus shows, is
Les Minutes complètement cirque - Photo: Raynald Laurin
Page 30
housed in a gray and glass office tower in a bleak
section of town, a stone's throw from what was once
the third-largest landfill in North America. From this
unassuming headquarters, an army of artisans works to
create — and maintain — the look that, for many, has
come to symbolize circus in the 21st century.
It's a look — always colorful and always astonishing,
but with large helpings of a TV-ready mysticism that
can come off as saccharine and a bit silly at times —
that is fueled, in large part, by the jaw-dropping
production value that has become Cirque du Soleil's
signature. Already incredible human feats verge on
superhuman, thanks to the many millions of dollars the
company invests in technical wizardry, fantastical
costumes, and transformative makeup that can take
more than two hours to apply.
The aesthetic has paid off, both in terms of the
renewed recognition and respect circus has garnered in
recent decades — a large glass case at the company's
headquarters displays dozens of shiny trophies, from
Emmys to prestigious European clowning awards —
but also in financial returns. Cirque du Soleil brings in
approximately $1 billion dollars annually, according to
Patrick Leroux, an associate professor in playwriting
and drama at Montreal's Concordia University, and a
founding member of the Montreal Working Group on
Circus Research. "And 85% of that comes from the
United States," Leroux said in an interview.
So it makes sense that, to many people, contemporary
circus is a place of otherworldly spectacle. Yet
amazement can take a viewer only so far. In the end, a
Cirque audience is transported, certainly — but in a
way that is actually reminiscent of the lo-fi circus of
yesteryear. Cirque's currency is
old-school
amazement, hopped up on the steroids of extreme
production value. It is an amazing visual feast. But one
can be amazed for only so long.
Not all fun and games
Many smaller circus companies have recognized this,
and are pushing the art form toward something that
connects to human feelings more nuanced and
certainly more familiar than the unbridled awe a
Cirque du Soleil show typically inspires. "You have to
have something to say," said Gypsy Snider, one of the
seven founders of Les 7 doigts de la main (translation:
the seven fingers of the hand), an innovative company
that, according to Snider, tries to create shows that
connect to audiences through a purposeful lack of
artifice. In their first show, Loft, premised on the idea
that the viewer is watching a group of roommates at
play, the seven performers all wore simple white
underwear.
Snider, who grew up in the circus, and six friends
formed the company in 2002. All had spent time with
Cirque du Soleil. "We wanted to create circus about
human things — not animals or aliens," Snider said.
And what is more human than sorrow? Everyone has
known the grief and pain of loss to some degree,
whether a thimble-full or a river's worth.
In their latest venture, 7 fingers takes on the big one —
death. Their show Intersections debuted at
Complètement on Thursday evening, the first big
performance of the festival. In it, a group of seven
unrelated characters meet in a series of chance
encounters, their lives intertwining a la the movies
Crash and Magnolia. Dressed in street clothes, their
stories are told through capable performances on
impossibly tall poles (they're known as Chinese poles),
a spinning hoop (a lira, in circus parlance), and
acrobatics and dance on the stage floor, which
resembles, unsurprisingly, an intersection of two
perpendicular streets. At one point, a full-size BMW
appears on the stage, serving as a set piece for a highenergy sequence of acrobatics.
Interspersed between these various circus feats, videos
play on two large screens, and each character tells a
piece of his or her story in the style of an off-the-cuff
interview. Because all but two were in French, nonFrench speakers in the audience had to rely on the
physical action onstage to understand the show's
narrative. Sadly, the physical action didn't reveal the
show's biggest plot point — one of the characters was
killed. It was clear from the physical action that as
viewers, we were supposed to feel something kind of
sad, but what it was, and why it would even matter
didn't come through. Discussions with native French
speakers after the show revealed that they, too, didn't
understand that someone had died.
However, there was a very big thing missing: one of
the characters, and a full 20 minutes of the show. A
trapeze artist — there were supposed to be eight
characters — had been injured the day before, and
there'd been a mad scramble to adapt. We learned that
one character had to entirely improvise one portion of
his performance.
Yet even once this was revealed, the emotional impact
of the show was still somewhat lacking. The talent on
display was undeniable, and undeniably impressive to
watch, but the physicality, the videos, the set, the
costumes — the overall attempt at "ordinariness" —
somehow rang a bit hollow.
Intersections dealt with heavy material, and certainly
deserves accolades for doing so. But the show needs a
Page 31
bit more time to mature before it can connect with the
audience in a significant way.
Where the 7 fingers show fell short, a performance
that had its North American debut the following
evening provided a masterful example of how the
circus can confront mourning and loss.
On Friday, the large man in the fashionable t-shirt
wasn't the only one who wept.
Circus laid bare
see struggle and heartbreak and frustration. In one of
the most arresting moments, we watch Fabrice from
above, lying in bed flat on his back, flinging himself
violently from side to side, hands balled in fists, arms
pumping above his head; first left, then right, back and
forth, back and forth, side to side, again and again. At
first it appears he's simply trying to sit up, but it goes
on far too long, and without success. It's hard to watch.
Once he flew. Now he can't accomplish even the most
mundane human tasks on his own.
Before the show even started, Acrobates didn't feel
like a circus show. The audience trooped into an
unremarkable, several-hundred seat theater, and sat
looking down on a darkened proscenium. We might
have been about to watch an Ibsen play. The lights
faded to black and the show began.
Now, a quick note. Those of you who are planning to
see this show may wish to stop reading immediately.
And please resist any urges to indulge in some light,
pre-show Googling. It will not ruin it, by any means
— this show is far too strong to be vanquished by
spoilers — but it may dilute your experience during
the show, and that would be a shame. Acrobates is best
experienced as an innocent. But back to the show.
First, there was silence. A long silence. Then, a man's
voice filled the dark. He spoke in French, his tone
genuine and confiding, and a video appeared on a
large screen. (And, for the first time since the show
debuted in February 2013 in Monfort, France, super
titles in English appeared over the stage — much to
the relief of the non-French speakers in the audience.)
Footage of trapeze artists clad in white, soaring
through the air appeared. Then, a doctor holding an xray up to the light, a recognizable stack of human
vertebrae running down the middle.
From almost the very first moment of the show, it's
clear that something terrible has happened. Yet the
tragedy is introduced with restraint, and spare
simplicity — there's no soaring music, no quickening
drumbeat, no manipulation of emotion with the usual
theatrical tools. Instead, human voices and images on
the screen let us feel the weight of the event on our
own time.We learn that a man has had an accident. In
voiceover, he remembers the moment it happened; that
it was "like being dazzled by darkness." He is an
acrobat — one of the extraordinary humans we'd seen
just moments earlier, flying from one set of
outstretched hands to another, all grace and power and
defiance.
In the montage and voiceover that follows, we see this
man — his name is Fabrice — in a wheel chair. We
Alexandre Fournier and Matias Pilet in Acrobates
Photo: Cindy Boyce
But we also see that Fabrice is resilient — and
courageous. We see him sitting in his wheelchair,
perched in a rocky landscape, egging on a young man
clambering up a tower of ragged boulders. He cracks
jokes as he's pushed into a thicket of ferns so dense
and tall that he and a companion quickly disappear
from view, a riot of green swallowing up wheelchair
and "driver" as they plunge into the unknown.
The final sections of the video reveal Fabrice back in
the world of circus, this time working with two young
acrobats, Alex and Matias, who treat him both as
Page 32
teacher and colleague as they hoist and lift him on a
mat. We realize that their voices are two of the three
voices we've been hearing. Then, we hear Matias
describe a devastating phone call. Fabrice has died.
The video stops. The screens fly away. We see two
figures. In dim light, we start to realize that the two
men, clad in simple gray jeans, black t-shirts, and
sneakers that squeak against the stage as they perform
an arduous, heartbreaking and, finally, triumphant pas
de deux, are Alex and Matias.
Alexandre Fournier is long and lithe, both in face and
in build, and has the angular look of a Nordic prince;
Matias Pilet, perhaps eight inches shorter, and, like
Fournier, possessed of an acrobat's impossible power
and grace, could be a Spanish courtier — swarthy,
dark-lashed, and crowned with a shock of thick black
curls.
Over the course of the rest of the show, accompanied
by simple voiceover — their own voices, now, alone,
without Fabrice — and a soundtrack comprising
bouncing ping-pong balls, pounding torrents of rain,
rushing water, and a string quartet, among other
sounds, the men's astounding movements tell of grief
and loss and, more than anything, human devotion.
At one point, after one of the most wrenching
moments of the show, when Pilet throws his body
repeatedly upon the stage, falling again and again (to
the point that a rustle of discomfort and fear ran
through the audience), Fournier picks him up from the
floor. As he lifts Pilet's inert body, he pulls his t-shirt
down to cover the shorter man's exposed torso. It is a
simple gesture infused with tenderness and, like every
moment of the show, choreographed with infinite care.
"When he was in his wheelchair, Fabrice's t-shirt used
to come up, and I would pull it down for him. As a
joke, he would do the same thing to me," said
Stéphane Ricordel, director of the show, during an
interview the following morning. "He was my best
friend."
Fabrice Champion was 33 when he collided with a
fellow performer during a rehearsal with the renowned
French trapeze company Les Arts Sauts in 2004.
Ricordel was also a member of the company.
Champion was paralyzed from the waist down. For
years, he sought alternative treatment, convinced that
there must be a way out of his wheelchair. All the
while, filmmaker Olivier Meyrou documented his
travails. After seven years, Champion finally returned
to his roots in the circus, and began to teach and
mentor young acrobats. That's where he met Fournier
and Pilet. In 2011, the three men were on the verge of
opening a show titled No Limits. Shortly before its
debut, Champion died during a ritual in Peru after
taking ayahuasca, an herb that causes wild, and
according to some of its adherents, life-changing
hallucinations.
Ricordel said he and the two young students waited six
months after his friend's death, "and then we began to
work." Acrobates is what resulted. Ricordel, a
renowned circus artist with more than 30 years of
experience, said that much of the look of the show
came to him almost immediately. He knew what he
wanted.
Ricordel has created a spare, stark, deeply moving
show that confronts death, mourning, and despair, yet
ultimately serves as a triumphant celebration of the
power of the human body and, most important, of
friendship. Fournier and Pilet are extraordinary. And
they can't be replaced.
"The show belongs to them," Ricordel said. "If one of
them decides to stop, we stop."
ANDREA MUSTAIN is a freelance journalist in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in a variety of outlets:
Scientific American, the Christian Science Monitor, Live Science, Capital Ideas, and the radio program Marketplace,
among others. See more of her work and contact her here: andreamustain.com.
Page 33
SUR LE FIL, DE LA PERTINENCE D’INTÉGRER UNE
TRAME NARRATIVE AU SPECTACLE CIRCASSIEN
PAR LUCIE RENAUD
À l’ère du numérique, de l’instantané, alors que le
bombardement d’images parasite l’imaginaire, est-il
encore possible de s’évader d’un quotidien souvent
trop prosaïque? Quel rôle peut jouer le cirque? Doit-il
simplement divertir, éblouir ? Un fil narratif est-il
nécessaire – ou même souhaitable ? Si oui, doit-on
nécessairement y superposer, en deuxième narration,
de façon presque insidieuse, une trame sonore?
Chaque compagnie avancera des réponses différentes à
ces questions, autant d’approches complémentaires qui
rejoindront le spectateur à plus d’un niveau.
ponctué d’une série d’apex successifs, habilement
calibrés.
Dans les années 1970, le cirque s’essouffle. Peut-être
était-il nécessaire qu’il passe à deux doigts de devenir
obsolète pour connaître une véritable renaissance avec
le nouveau cirque, mais aussi la mise sur pied d’écoles
agréées et l’appropriation de la forme par les artistes
du monde de théâtre, permettant l’exploration de
nouvelles dramaturgies. Les prouesses sont remplacées
par un discours cohérent et une conceptualisation du
propos. Un certain réalisme et une réflexion sociale
sont incorporés aux productions, ainsi qu’une ligne
narrative servant de guide.
Si l’on préfère aujourd’hui parler de cirque
contemporain ou « de création », il faut surtout
remarquer combien les frontières entre les genres
deviennent floues, le spectacle de cirque ressemblant
très souvent à la performance, au cabaret ou à la danse
contemporaine.
Tracer une ligne droite entre fiction et réalité
Les Minutes complètement cirque – Photo : Renald Laurin
Une syntaxe en évolution
Comme ses influences directes ou indirectes – les jeux
antiques romains, les bateleurs et les troubadours du
Moyen Âge –, les premières représentations de cirque
de Philip Astley ne s’appuyaient pas sur une narrativité
linéaire pour rejoindre le public. Si pantomimes et
numéros de voltige se liaient aux numéros équestres, il
ne s’agissait pas ici de raconter une histoire, mais bien
de mettre sur pied une soirée équilibrée, qui mettrait
en lumière les prouesses des artistes, mais surtout
créerait un certain niveau d’attente et de fascination.
Porté par les roulements de tambour ou une diatribe, le
badaud veut être confronté à l’inusité. Quand, un
demi-siècle plus tard, on choisit d’ajouter le domptage
des animaux et des pantomimes à grand déploiement –
par exemple Les lions de Myore, segment mis sur pied
en 1831 par les frères Franconi pour Henri Martin –,
on continuera de privilégier un discours fragmenté,
Avec Intersection des Sept doigts de la main, spectacle
conçu spécialement pour souligner le cinquième
anniversaire
du
Festival
MONTRÉAL
COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE, les metteurs en scène
Samuel Tétreault et Gypsy Snider ont conçu un
événement immersif, faisant allègrement disparaître
les frontières entre spectacle et quotidien. Alors que le
public est invité pendant la première demi-heure à
découvrir une série de stations, articulées autour d’un
croisement évoquant l’Intersection du titre, il a parfois
l’impression de faire partie d’une étrange mise en
abyme. « Le spectateur doit se sentir concerné,
soutient Samuel Tétreault en entrevue. Vous ne pouvez
pas simplement tricher. » Que l’on s’attarde devant
une contorsionniste préparant un gâteau avec ses pieds
plutôt qu’avec ses mains, assiste à la rencontre autour
d’une baignoire entre artiste et enfant visiblement
fascinée, touche des doigts des trésors accumulés dans
un grenier imaginaire pendant qu’un interprète lit une
histoire dans son lit superposé ou soit témoin des
mouvements concertés autour des politiques présents
ce soir-là, on ne peut que penser à la célèbre citation
Page 34
de Shakespeare tirée de Comme il vous plaira : « La
vie n’est qu’un théâtre et tous, hommes et femmes,
n’en sont que les acteurs. » Chacun prend conscience
de ces inconnus – qui ne le sont déjà plus
entièrement – qui l’entourent, commence à les
percevoir comme parts intégrantes du spectacle.
Quand on finit par rejoindre son siège, portant au cou
un collier qui clignotera à certains moments, soutien
tacite à la dramaturgie, on a l’impression d’être devenu
membre de la troupe ou que les artistes de cirque ne
sont au fond que l’une de ces personnes croisées au
cours d’une journée sans que l’on y prête grande
attention. Gypsy Snider admet une fascination pour les
êtres qui l’entourent et conçoit les numéros de cirque
comme des monologues théâtraux ou même des
confessions, articulés de façon concertée : « Vous
devez créer un pont avec la personne qui est 60 pieds
au-dessus du sol, explique-t-elle, être capable de créer
une question qu’elle pourra résoudre. C’est un énorme
acte de foi. Dès le début, le public évalue ce qu’il voit.
Il existe 100 000 conceptions différentes de l’image
d’une femme sur un trapèze. Le cirque est très
viscéral. Vous devez y capter la fébrilité et la
théâtralité, cesser de prétendre que cela relève de la
magie. »
La mise en scène a été articulée autour des huit
personnages incarnés par les artistes. (Une blessure
sérieuse a forcé une refonte du propos pour n’inclure
que sept intervenants le matin même de la première.)
Chacun a rempli un questionnaire afin d’étoffer les
traits psychologiques de son alter ego, évoquant aussi
bien son passé, ses motivations que ses fragilités. Des
lettres – d’amour, de haine ou de regret – ont aussi été
produites, dont la charge a été accentuée par des
improvisations de quelques minutes de la part de
chacun des interprètes. « Le spectacle n’est jamais
écrit avant que la distribution ait été choisie, souligne
Snider. Vous devez être passionné par l’interprète
avant d’écrire pour lui. » On peut ainsi découvrir au fil
de capsules vidéo qui ponctuent le spectacle un
professeur, un collectionneur, un voyageur, un barman,
une jeune femme qui peine à accepter l’abandon de sa
mère biologique ou cette autre n’ayant qu’un rêve :
devenir Miss Météo. Des personnalités atypiques peutêtre, non dépourvues d’un certain côté pathétique,
mais dans lesquels chacun peut se projeter d’une façon
ou d’une autre.
Chaque segment, admirablement porté par une trame
musicale conçue et remixée par Colin Gagné, prolonge
une émotion, une situation, une tonalité. Numéro de
diabolo intégré à la Première suite pour violoncelle de
Bach, scène de rupture dans le bar enveloppée d’une
relecture décalée en 3/4 d’un des plus gros tubes de la
dernière année, numéro de cerceau suspendu
naturellement associé à l’évanescente Les étoiles de
Melody Gardot, ultime numéro d’antipodisme soutenu
par les Métamorphoses de Philip Glass : chaque phrase
musicale semble avoir été pensée pour s’emboîter dans
le propos, deuxième narration d’une rare efficacité, à
laquelle plusieurs ont pu superposer leurs souvenirs en
une troublante mosaïque, destins en apparence
parallèles se percutant en un même instant.
Sabrina Aganier dans Intersection
Photo : Mathieu Létourneau
Ligne brisée entre passé et présent
Peut-on invoquer la mort d’un être aimé sans tomber
dans le misérabilisme, transformer en matériau
scénique sa voix, des vidéos, qu’à la fois il occupe le
premier rôle et s’efface derrière le récit ? C’est le pari
audacieux qu’ont choisi de relever le metteur en scène
Stéphane Ricordel et le cinéaste Olivier Meyrou afin
de rendre hommage à Fabrice Champion, trapéziste
des Arts Sauts, devenu tétraplégique en 2004 à la suite
d’un accident en plein vol, décédé en 2011 au Pérou
alors qu’il y participait à une cérémonie chamanique.
Tout le spectacle s’articule autour de cette disparition,
maximise les volumes, les vides, la configuration des
écrans étant réorganisée au fur et à mesure. Les
panneaux se lisent comme une métaphore du corps de
Fabrice, fracturé, fragmenté, pourtant mû par une
volonté concertée.
À la mort du voltigeur, Stéphane Ricordel a perdu son
meilleur ami. Il pouvait sembler naturel de vouloir en
tirer un spectacle, pétri d’histoire personnelle. Il a
pourtant attendu six mois avant d’amorcer le
processus, refusant que la conception se mue en
thérapie, aussi bien pour lui que pour les interprètes.
Cet envoutant objet hybride ne se veut pas tant un
hommage, qu’« une volonté de parler d’amitié, sujet
“normal”, mais dont on ne parle jamais », aussi bien
qu’une réflexion sur la démarche artistique.
Premier choix, relevant presque de l’évidence, qui
dicterait d’une certaine façon tous les autres : intégrer
Page 35
à la scénographie un redoutable plan incliné à 43
degrés, qui force les deux jeunes acrobates à n’avoir
que très rarement les pieds ancrés au sol et à travailler
sur les limites – « mais avec contrôle » précise
Ridordel –, jusqu’à l’explosion de mouvement dans les
dernières minutes du spectacle. Alexandre Fournier et
Matias Pilet peuvent enfin tout donner, après avoir été
brimés par une série de gestes contre nature,
prolongement de la démarche qu’avait entreprise
Champion de « redevenir un artiste de cirque, malgré
un corps “endormi” ». (Ce dernier travaillait d’ailleurs
à Nos limites, un spectacle à trois de tétra-acrobatie
avec Fournier et Pilet, que chorégraphiera au final
Radhouane El Meddeb pour le duo.)
Des images de la nature (qui faisaient partie d’un
documentaire qu’Olivier Meyrou souhaitait consacrer
au voltigeur) et des gestes du quotidien (comme ce
délicat moment alors qu’un des interprètes replace le
chandail de l’autre, geste que Ricordel lui-même a
posé des centaines de fois) se trouvent intégrées à la
chorégraphie. S’y juxtaposent des segments vidéo au
cours desquels Fabrice tente de transcender ses
nouvelles limitations aussi bien que des extraits audio.
« J’peux plus marcher, j’peux plus monter d’escalier,
j’peux plus avoir d’orgasmes, j’peux plus me
promener dans les prés, j’peux plus nager dans les
rivières, dans les lacs… » Déchirante énumération qui
servira de motif à un passage fugué travaillé en aplats
par le compositeur François-Eudes Chanfrault. Ce
dernier a privilégié une partition parfois chargée de
lyrisme, souvent bruitiste (respirations, battements de
cœur ou encore balle de ping-pong qui rebondit, clin
d’œil au sport que Ricordel et Champion pratiquaient),
toujours percutante – et même par moments
envahissante pour sait décortiquer les codes du genre.
On y a aussi intégré des silences, parce que
« n’importe quoi peut arriver pendant ce silence »,
rappelle Ricordel. Autant de moments pendant
lesquels le public peut recouvrer son souffle, mais
aussi prendre conscience de ses propres limites.
Regrouper les éléments autrement
Si certaines compagnies jugent essentiel d’intégrer un
fil narratif, d’autres choisissent de l’ignorer ou de le
tisser de façon détournée, voire décalée dans le cas de
Barbu-Foire Électro Trad du Cirque Alfonse. Aucun
doute ici : les curieux ne se sont pas massés au Théâtre
Telus pour se faire raconter une histoire cohérente,
mais pour vivre une expérience différente, entre fin de
soirée arrosée entre amis et voyage dans le temps. Plus
précisément au tournant du 20e siècle, alors que l’on
se pressait à la Foire Sohmer, aussi bien pour voir le
mythique Louis Cyr que faire un tour de manège (le
duo de patins à roulettes en relève certainement),
assister à un freak show (le numéro d’entartage de
punching-ball humain est à ranger dans cette
catégorie), écouter de la musique ou danser.
Amalgamant les codes du cabaret allemand (plusieurs
des artistes de la compagnie s’y sont d’ailleurs
produits), du burlesque et du cirque traditionnel,
Barbu ne laisse personne indifférent – on adore ou on
déteste – et se veut plus physique et spectaculaire que
le salué Timber !, au fil rouge narratif apparent, dans
lequel numéros et accessoires évoquaient les camps de
bûcherons.
« Tout le monde réagit au danger et au rire, rappelle
Antoine Carabinier Lépine, un des fondateurs du
Cirque Alfonse. Il n’y a pas de barrière de langage, pas
de trucs : si tu t’entraînes, tu peux réussir ! » La
musique traditionnelle mâtinée d’électro d’André
Gagné et David Simard dresse un pont astucieux entre
le Québec d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, comme les vidéos
de Frédéric Barrette, orientées sur la nature
environnant St-Alphonse-de-Rodriguez dans une
première partie plutôt atmosphérique, puis sur le corps
humain, ce qui suscitera nombre de fous rires de
l’auditoire, particulièrement quand les larrons aux
physiques plus tout à fait sculpturaux se déhancheront
en maillots de bain moulants, ruban multicolore à la
main.
La jeune compagnie Lapsus a elle aussi voulu laisser
au spectateur toute la latitude nécessaire pour qu’il
intègre sa propre fiction. « L’histoire nous enfermait
plus qu’autre chose », a précisé Gwenaëlle Traonquez
après la représentation. De nombreuses références
cinématographiques
ponctuent
néanmoins
la
proposition, que ce soit La guerre des boutons de
Robert, North by Northwest (La mort aux trousses)
d’Hitchcock ou La cité des enfants perdus de Jeunet.
« Nous n’avions pas un cahier de charge d’émotions. »
Ici, les fragilités individuelles permettent d’étouffer la
trame et d’y apposer certaines nuances, mais il faut
admettre que la multiplicité des thèmes abordés
(l’opposition entre collectivité et individualité,
verticalité
et
horizontalité,
apocalypse
et
reconstruction, hier et aujourd’hui, sans oublier une
interrogation sur les genres) pouvait facilement égarer
ceux présents, peu de prouesses étant offertes pour les
maintenir en haleine.
« Il y a une puissance et une beauté à ce que le corps
humain peut faire », fait remarquer avec justesse Julie
Jenkins, directrice artistique et fondatrice avec son
mari de la compagnie américaine Midnight Circus qui
propose du cirque traditionnel familial. « Vous devez
revenir à la simplicité. » Ici, il n’est pas seulement
question de présenter un spectacle efficace,
« accessible pour les enfants, mais écrit pour leurs
Page 36
parents », mais d’établir une communauté. Cette
volonté de rejoindre l’autre n’est-elle pas au fond la
base même du cirqu ? « Il y a un degré d’humanité
dans le cirque que l’on ne retrouve pas dans les autres
formes », rappelle Gypsy Snider. Sans toujours
l’admettre, ne rêvons-nous pas tous d’atteindre ce
délicat équilibre entre le moi de l’individu (et ses
forces spécifiques) et le nous de la collectivité qui le
soutient ?
LUCIE RENAUD est journaliste et rédactrice spécialisée en musique classique, théâtre et littérature, basée à Montréal,
Québec. Elle a entre autre collaboré à la Revue JEU et anime régulièrement son propre blogue, Clavier bien tempéré.
HOWDY !
BY CHRIS ZEKE HAND
From July 3rd to July 6th I participated in the first ever
residency at MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT
CiRQUE organized by En Piste. More of an
immersive experience than a residency, there were
nine other writers involved from all over North
America. I hadn't ever participated in any sort of
residency program unless you consider summer camp
when I was a teenager a residency, and it was made
weirder by the fact that I actually slept in my own bed
every night.
The basic idea was to enlighten and inform folk like
me so that we could write more and more better on
circuses. For the most part I think they succeeded
beyond their wildest dreams.
in everything circus. We basically did everything
expect swing on a trapeze and take bows at the end of
a performance.
As part of the residency, there were some
seminar/round table discussions held amongst all the
participants led by Yohann Floch on things such as
recent history of the circus, current trends in
contemporary circus and the like. In one of them, M.
Floch asked "Does virtuosity stop narrative?"
After seeing all the circuses I saw, and having some
time to reflect on it, I can confidently say, "no." In fact
I would state that where there is a narrative in circus,
because even in this day and age, not all circuses have
or require narrative, lack of virtuosity stops narrative.
Cold, dead in its tracks. In the shows where there were
some flaws in performance (more on them later) it
completely knocked whatever storyline they had aside
or for a loop and made things confusing. While all the
shows which had narrative and accomplished any
virtuosic performances took it into account in their
narrative.
Another statement made was that there is "no sense of
repertoire in circus." And while on the surface I am
inclined to agree with it. Once I start delving a little
deeper, I am not so sure.
Babel_Remix – Photo: Raynald Laurin
Over the course of four days we saw seven circuses
(an average of one circus every 12 hours) spoke with
about 25 different people involved in making circuses
and in general were completely immersed for 84 hours
If you interpret "repertoire" as you do in theatre or
music as a "list of dramas, operas, parts, pieces, etc.,
that a company, actor, singer, or the like, is prepared to
perform." Then there is no sense of it. No one is
looking to recreate Ringling Brothers Barnum and
Bailey's Red Unit from 1970 (no matter how much I
Page 37
would love to see a recreation of the first circus I ever
saw).
woman twirling paper umbrellas with her feet, and
some other things.
However if you interpret "repertoire" as "the entire
stock of skills, techniques, or devices used in a
particular field or occupation" then there is plenty of
repertoire in circus. Six of the seven shows I saw had a
three high. And the only reason the seventh didn't was
because there were only two performers. Similarly
with an aerial hoop, wire walking, hand-to-hand
acrobatics and a couple of other circus skills as well.
While Marc Lalonde, director of the École nationale
de cirque mentioned in passing during one of the
discussions that if people think it is a circus, it is a
circus. In fact there are some fairly well defined ideas
on what makes a circus a circus and it is the repertoire
of circus skills that enables something to be a circus.
Initially, I was going to include brief descriptions of
the other participants, but I realized that the main
focus was and should be on the circus, so you're going
to have to leave it up to your imagination as to who
else was there.
I also made a mistake on the first day in that I didn't
take any notes. My memory is absolute crap and as a
consequence I barely remember any details. Somehow
I thought that I going to be able to remember things.
Yeah, right. But thankfully, I was taking notes from
day two onwards, so even weeks later I can use them
as a mnemonic crutch.
The first show we saw was Intersection by Les 7
doigts de la main and was probably the most
contentious as well. The day before the premiere,
Danica Gagnon-Plamondon, one of the performers,
hurt herself, and as a consequence the entire show
needed to be rejigged, reformatted and remade in
under 24 hours. As we saw it on opening night, what
we saw really wasn't in any shape to be consumed by
the public. Matters were made worse by the fact that
her absence wasn't announced until after the show was
completed. For what it is worth, she was/is the woman
who was on the poster and all the publicity for the
show. My guess from just knowing that, would be that
she was integral to the show. I think things would have
been helped immensely, if they had announced at the
beginning of the show that Ms. Gagnon-Plamondon
was absent due to an injury and as a consequence the
show was an "alternate" version.
As I mentioned I (stupidly) did not take notes. So all I
remember is a sensation in passing of something being
"kick-ass." I think it was one performer's entry onto
the Chinese pole. But I cannot be certain. And
obviously of everyone milling about on stage before
the performance proper. There was also a car, some
Heloïse Bourgeois and William Underwood in Intersection
I contemplated returning at the end of the festival, as
the initial scuttlebutt was that it wasn't a severe injury
and she would return. But unfortunately that was not
the case, and I made the executive decision to not see a
bad show a second time. I hope that at the end of its
touring life it returns to Montreal and I am able to see
it as it was originally intended to be seen.
As it was, the concept really did not come off as they
intended and there weren't any acts that made me go
"Wow!" to overcome that. The videos that I figure
were designed to make the theory and concept hold
together only served to confuse me in the revised
version.
The following day we met with Gypsy Snider and
Samuel Tétreault, the two directors of the show. Ms.
Snyder told her biography and kind of danced around
any specifics for or about Intersections. She spent an
awful lot of time talking about her work on the
Broadway musical Pippin. She and M. Tétreault
seemed to interrupt each other, preventing any
question that any of us asked from really being fully
answered. Ms. Snyder talked about how Intersections
Page 38
had references to and was made in response to a bunch
of films – none of which I had ever seen. Upon
hearing that I am not so certain that the complete as
originally envisioned version of Intersections will be
something that knocks my socks off. As I'm fairly
particular in what films I see, and if I haven't seen a
certain film, it is most likely because of something I
have read or been told that makes me think that I won't
like it. And while I recognize it is possible to take a
crappy influences and make a great show, more often
it is the other way around.
Small Tent Big Shoulders by Midnight Circus was the
second show we saw. Middle of the day in a tent
outside on the grounds of TOHU. At the time, I wasn't
aware, but I was told afterwards that they were the
first ever American (as from the United States of
America) circus to ever be invited to the festival, and
Sarah Muehlbauer (another participant who is also a
circus performer) then went on (at various times
during the weekend) to emphasize how significant and
important this was.
During the residency, it became obvious that there
were large and significant differences between
European circuses and American circuses. The major
and most evident, being the loudness, brashness and
cocksure nature of the Americans. Versus the more
discrete and reserved nature of the Europeans. As
Quebec culture is very definitely aligned more with
European culture I can understand how being the first
American circus to be invited in five years would be a
big deal.
Midnight Circus is run by Julie and Jeff Jenkins, and
includes their six year-old daughter, Samantha, their
nine year-old son, Max and 11 other performers. They
do some awesome stuff. Before I get into a description
of their show, it probably wouldn't hurt to talk about
their commitment to community and Chicago
community in specific. From what I understand they
put on a bunch of shows in their hometown where they
charge between $5 and $15 for ticket. The shows are
done in parks in Chicago and all the money raised (not
a percentage of the money raised, not a percentage of
the profits, all the money raised) is then given to the
specific park where they performed so as to enable
repairs, purchases of new equipment, upkeep and other
stuff that makes the park even better.
One of the performers, Tim Shaw, runs the Chicago
Boyz Acrobatic Team when he isn't performing with
the Jenkins. The Chicago Boyz provides an alternative
to drugs and gangs for disadvantaged inner city youth.
And I'm fairly convinced that the other performers are
equally committed to the idea of community, but
because they were supporting cast, we did not have a
chance to ask them details.
As you might expect, Midnight Circus is a family
circus done in a rah-rah American style. Some of the
highlights were the Chinese Pole duet done by Aislinn
Mulligan and Nich Galzin. Brett Pfister's aerial hoop
act (for the most part hooping, aerial, ground or at any
level is something done by women, not men). And the
trained dog act, if only because the music was
incredibly loud and I had difficulty hearing the
commands which makes me think that Junebug, the
dog, had even more difficulty concentrating.
The entire cast of Midnight Circus came out to talk
with us right after the show. Jeff and Julie explained
how they had started (him with Ringling Brothers and
her in traditional theater) and gave a brief synopsis of
the 20 year history of Midnight Circus. They then
proceeded to explain in great detail their partnership
with the Chicago Parks department and their
commitment to their community. It was quite
charming seeing the Jenkins finish each other’s'
sentences and it became apparent quite quickly how
much they believed in and were committed to each
other, the circus and the community.
Acrobates by Productions Le Monfort was by far and
away the best show of the entire festival. Challenging
in many respects, it was a phenomenal concept that
was executed spectacularly.
In short, Fabrice Champion was an acrobat, he had an
accident that left him a quadriplegic. His best friend
(Stéphane Ricordel), a guy who was making a film
about his life (Olivier Meyrou) and two kids who he
was directing (Alexandre Fournier, Matias Pilet)
decided to create a show after he suddenly and
unexpectedly died. Acrobates is what the four of them
came up with.
Done in basically three parts, Fabrice as quadriplegic
acrobat, Fabrice's death, and the aftermath. The first
part involves Alexandre Fournier and Matias Pilet
dancing, tumbling and basically trying to do things
acrobatic on a stage that is inclined at 43° with
traditional video and projection mapping on the
inclined stage. The second part, or the part of the
second part that will stick with me for a very long
time, is M. Pilet doing a variety of acrobatic and
tumbling moves that are deliberately done badly. Not
badly, as in sloppy, badly as in landing awkwardly.
Normally when you attempt a backflip, you attempt to
land on your feet. When you don't land on your feet, it
hurts. Now imagine deliberately not landing on your
feet. Now imagine doing this multiple times. Kind of
like the opposite of slapstick. Physical theatre that is
Page 39
sad and tragic. And the third part is where M. Fournier
and M. Pilet do some rather impressive hand-to-hand
acrobatics.
The video fits in seamlessly with the dancing and
acrobatics, and all combine to pack an emotional
punch that happens all too infrequently in dance and
even less in the circus. In our discussion with M.
Ricordel he mentioned how his first idea for the show
was for there to be a slope. His second was to put M.
Fournier and M. Pilet in "danger." The third was to
explain what it means to be an acrobat. He also wanted
to deliberately incorporate theatre and dance into
circus, as a direct reaction to circus more frequently
being incorporated into theatre and dance.
We met with Stéphane Ricordel a day after seeing the
show, which enabled us to not only have time to digest
and think about the show, but also discuss it amongst
ourselves, which enabled everyone to have more
rational and reasoned ideas and question. It also
helped that M. Ricordel had spent an awful lot of time
thinking about how and what he wanted to show to be,
and was very eloquent in explaining things to us.
Goldberg machine, but from there it all goes downhill.
They make reference to World War 2, build some
towers with the blocks, smash the towers, do some
juggling with clubs, crush some eggshells with a
unicycle, record the sounds of the eggshells being
crushed along with other noises made by the unicycle,
dance around and in general do circus-y things.
Despite them doing the "circus-y things" there was no
real coherence to the show. It wasn't like Midnight
Circus which was a collection of disparate acts, it was
more like 7 doigts de la main where there was some
kind of character development and a plot. But like
Intersections it did not come across at all. Although for
very different reasons.
Despite having over "300 wooden blocks" they chose
to use clubs to juggle. The clubs never came back on
stage again. There was no real link between the egg at
the beginning and the eggshells in the second half of
the performance. Heck juggling eggs and blocks
would have been something. And as long as I am
complaining, the brief bits about war did nothing,
weren't connected to any other scenes and also used 70
year-old clichés that have nothing to do with how war
is fought today.
The interview with some of the artists from Lapsus
started off kind of awkwardly when the performers
were told that they couldn't use the one sort of
bilingual person to translate the questions and their
answers (they all were, as we say in Montreal, "French
from France.") As a consequence their answers were
kind of generic. This time I actually saw one of the
films that served as inspiration; North by Northwest.
But I haven't gotten around to seeing La Cité des
enfants perdus or any of the versions of La Guerre des
boutons. Which could account for why I liked it more
than Intersections, but wasn't entirely enamored of it.
Six pieds sur terre – Photo: Lapsus
Six pieds sur terre by Lapsus started out promisingly.
With the six performers trooping out on stage with
some kind of contraption that turns out to be a bunch
of boxes and blocks that are first transformed into a
living room setting where the six of them clown their
way through eating an egg before making a Rube
Working off the success of their previous show,
Timber!, the Cirque Alfonse created their third show
with a nod to the 21st century, Barbu-Foire Électro
Trad. Cabaret style with a live band. Roughly 20
different acts split in two parts with an intermission.
As you would expect, some acts worked better than
others. I was particularly disappointed by the one
where the women were mud wrestling, which closed
the first half. I have no problem with sexuality being
expressed on stage, but gratuitous sexuality designed
solely to appeal to male heterosexual fantasies really
doesn't cut it for me. Especially when there is no
corresponding balance designed to appeal to women,
gays or people with other sexual preferences. It left me
angry and annoyed, sufficiently, that my experience of
the entire second half was tainted. Which was
unfortunate as had my eye been less jaundiced, I
Page 40
probably would have enjoyed the whole show as
much, if not more so than Timber!.
equality of the sexes, pay equity and other things in
that vein.
It started off with a some pretty darn impressive roller
skating. Antoine Carabinier Lépine spinning,
Geneviève Morin being spun. Quickly followed by
some trick biking by (I think) Jacques Schneider and a
four wide three high. Some of the highlights of the
second part included a disco ball Cyr wheel and a
manipulation/tossing/balancing of an extremely shiny
beer keg. Given that the show was/is sponsored by
Unibroue, I was surprised that their logo wasn't more
prominently displayed.
Kurios du Cirque du Soleil – I didn't take notes while
watching the show, but in short, while it was
impressive and the acts involved were far and away
the most accomplished performers we saw (save for
Alexandre Fournier and Matias Pilet in Acrobates) it
struck me as somewhat soulless and fairly automatic.
I've seen a bunch of Cirque du Soleil shows, and while
they are all different, they all seem to be made using
the same mold. Large tent, bizarre, weird and vaguely
sci-fi set and costume design, a hodge-podge
collection of some spectacular circus performers from
all over the world, with just a touch of humor added.
Cirque Alfonse, for the most part are extremely good
circus performers. But they run the risk of becoming
known only as "that bearded circus" and losing the
inventive edge that they had in Timber! and falling
back on rehashing the same-old-same-old in new
packaging. Where it took five years after their first
performance to develop their second. It has been only
three years in between Timber! and Barbu (and I
would venture a guess the actual development time for
Barbu was much much less). I'm not as well versed in
the details of circus creation as I would like, and we
were seeing the very first shows of Barbu while when
I saw Timber it was well after the premiere. So trying
to figure out if the roughness comes from not having
performed it enough, or from the lack of time spent on
creation is beyond my abilities.
We met with Antoine Carabinier Lépine hours before
the premiere of his new circus and while they were
doing what was called a cue-to-cue rehearsal. As a
consequence (but it only occurred to me after the fact)
we really didn't know what questions to ask (I asked
how long they had had the beards and when was the
last time they had trimmed them, as if the fate of the
entire universe hung in the balance – for the record the
answers were "about four years" and "about six
months.").
In another case of hindsight being 20/20, M.
Carabinier Lépine also mentioned somewhat
boastfully during our Q and A, that both his exgirlfriend and his current girlfriend were performing in
the show. At the time everyone, including myself
didn't pay it too much attention, what with this being
the 21st century and all, and everyone having the right
to pretty much do what they want, with who they
want, when they want. But now I would read much
more into it (hence my interpretation of him saying it
as a boast, instead of a statement of fact) and the next
time I have an opportunity to speak to M. Carabinier
Lépine I will probably pay slightly more attention and
ask slightly more pointed questions on things like
As I've said elsewhere, the Cirque du Soleil is kind of
like a Prada handbag, Stolichnaya Elit vodka or a
Calvin Klein t-shirt, just another example of an
extremely well marketed, very expensive, assembly
line produced thing. While I realize that there are lots
of people who like those sort of things, I find it most
telling that after the fact, I find it extremely difficult to
remember anything that happened at a Cirque du
Soleil show.
RESET by Throw 2 Catch – a perfect remedy to the
Cirque du Soleil malaise. A local troupe using
technology (live video screening, tablet voting apps, a
live Twitter feed board, remixing the sounds from a
mic'd Russian bar) to present a perfectly good but
fairly common circus. Sometimes, just re-framing a
painting can make it look completely new and fresh.
Or wearing a new suit or pair of shoes can make you
feel like a million bucks. T2C has done similarly.
RESET – Photo: Throw2Catch
As part of the residency we were offered tours of the
Cirque du Soleil headquarters, the École nationale de
cirque and TOHU. Both the visit to the Circus school
and the visit to the Cirque du Soleil were very dry and
factual. Sorta like "this happens here, and this happens
here." Then we'd move to a different place and we'd be
told what happens at that spot. The visit to TOHU on
Page 41
the other hand was completely different. It was made
even clearer to me when Magalie Morin (another
participant in the residency) pointed out how
passionate the guy giving the tour at TOHU was in
comparison to the two women who gave the tour at the
Cirque du Soleil.
Basically because of the tri-part nature of TOHU's
mandate (Circus, Community, Environment) it enables
them to take a simple "this happens here, and this
happens here" type of tour and transform it into a "this
is why we do this here, and that is why we do that
there" type of tour that is simultaneously more
engaging, informative and entertaining.
Both the Cirque du Soleil and TOHU grow their own
vegetables and have beehives. Unfortunately it
appeared to me that it was done as a half-hearted after
thought at the Cirque du Soleil while it appeared to me
that the folk at TOHU actually enjoyed the food that
was grown and made on their premises, daily.
While it is all fine and dandy to get to see seven
circuses in 84 hours. One thing we were completely
insulated from was ticket prices. The only ticket with a
price printed on it was for the Cirque du Soleil, at a
whopping $125. Which wasn't even the top price. I
know that the festival itself was selling a pass that
enabled you to see all the shows for $125. Perusing the
website it appears that individual tickets were for the
most part, in between $35 and $50. And while for
some shows like Acrobates I'd gladly pay the price, for
others I'm not as convinced. Midnight Circus charges
$15 in Chicago, but $38 here in Montreal. While I
really liked their show and enjoyed myself, I still feel
the need to question the disparity in price. Then for the
shows that weren't quite as accomplished, I'm not so
certain I would be as understanding if I had actually
had to pay for my ticket.
I can remember multiple times in the past, where I
have been as angry as I was at the Cirque Alfonse
show, and I could easily see myself walking up to the
ticket booth at intermission and demanding a refund
because of that anger, had I actually paid for a ticket. I
don't think I would have been as harsh with Lapsus,
but I definitely would have felt that I did not get my
money's worth. I also can easily imagine that any
review I wrote would have been extremely different
had I in fact paid for my ticket.
Overall I gotta say that this was one of the more
awesome experiences I've had recently. I've taken to
parroting my friend Ken's line, that the circus festival
is the best festival in this city of festivals. Being
submerged in it, and given access to parts, places and
people that are normally "off limits," even to
accredited journalists aided immensely in gaining a
deeper understanding of all things circus.
I could go on for another 4,000 words, but that would
require I spend another 10 days writing, which I don't
quite have. Next year I will be participating in the
festival in a very different way. Where previously I
have felt somewhat of an outsider, part of that due to
me feeling like an outsider every day of my life. Next
year, I probably will feel much more like an insider as
a consequence of the experience.
CHRIS ZEKE HAND lives in Montréal, Québec. He regularly covers a variety of subjects on his own blog,
www.zeke.com
Page 42
REMERCIEMENTS
En Piste tient à remercier ses partenaires qui ont rendu possible la réalisation de
Circus Stories, Le cirque vu par…
La TOHU - MONTRÉAL COMPLÈTEMENT CiRQUE (Nadia Drouin, Alice Kop, Stéphane Lavoie, Annie
Leclerc-Casavant, Olivier Léger-Leduc, Nadine Marchand, Miruna Oana)
L’École nationale de cirque (Anna-Karina Barlati, Marc Lalonde, Christophe Rousseau)
Cirque du Soleil (Agathe Alie)
Les 7 doigts de la main (Gypsy Snider, Samuel Tétreault)
Midnight Circus
Cirque Alfonse
Compagnie Lapsus
Patrick Leroux, Groupe de travail de Montréal sur la recherche en cirque / Montreal Working Group on Circus
Research, Concordia University
Réseau FACE, Fresh Arts Coalition Europe
Depuis 1996 au Canada, EN PISTE a pour mission de :
Développer consolider et favoriser la cohésion du milieu des arts du cirque.
Promouvoir les arts du cirque et la reconnaissance du milieu auprès du public, des diffuseurs, des instances
gouvernementales, des communautés d'affaires et sociales.
Regrouper les organismes et les individus œuvrant dans les arts du cirque ou liés à leur développement.
En Piste | 8181, 2e Avenue, 7e étage, Montréal (Québec) H1Z 4N9 | www.enpiste.qc.ca | T. 514 529-1183 | F. 514 529-6565
Page 43

circus stories, le cirque vu par…

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