Sceneweb.fr2 July 2017
Cirque Plume bows out with melancholy
Cirque Plume presents La Dernière Saison, the final show to come out of an artistic adventure born in 1984 in Besançon. This poetic opus will be on tour through 2018. A final curtain for Bernard Kudlak and his gang.
In 1984, Hervé Canaud, Michèle Faivre, Vincent Filliozat, Jean-Marie Jacquet, Bernard Kudlak, Pierre Kudlak, Jacques Marquès, Robert Miny and Brigitte Sepaser created Cirque Plume. They invented a new form of circus, with proscenium staging, like at the theatre. For more than thirty years, they toured the entire world and became ambassadors of Besançon and of the Doubs: land of peacefulness, of simplicity, of work, and of deep nature. All these ingredients can be found in La Dernière saison.
A tree is suspended in the air, its leaves fallen to the ground. It is fall. Strange Shakespearean beings cross through the forest. We could be in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Pierre Kudlak appears naked on stage, he attempts some summersaults in front of the robust and stronger Cyril Casmeze. We’re in for Cirque Plume’s trademark mischievous humor. Sometimes it’s in slightly poor taste, but we forgive them.
Sad fanfares turn to happy ones, passing through the seasons. The drummer Nicolas Bonlet uses the stomachs of Pierre Kudlak and Cyril Casmeze to play music. Winter arrives. Xavi Sanchez-Martinez juggles feathers. Melancholy sets in. Primitive choreography recalls the origins of humanity. Cirque Plume, inventor of nouveau cirque, is the last of the Mohicans: creator of poetic images with simple materials.
For this final show, Bernard Kudlak has surrounded himself with exceptional artists. Anaëlle Molinario is a magnificent contortionist; Amanda Righetti is all grace and strength on the Chinese pole; Natalie Good is impressive on the tightwire, passing from one platform to another with extraordinary mastery, and perfectly landing a back flip.
Humor, derision, poetry, and also politics make their way across this Dernière Saison. A storm of plastic bags sullies the scene and then transforms it into an ocean. One last ecological message from Bernard Kudlak – an environmental activist and conservationist – before folding up his circus tent, and heading off to tend his garden in his new life.
Stéphane CAPRON