Spirit1 March 2012
Open your eyes, look at the world !
The Cirque Plume, one of the leading circus troupes of the 90s, is bringing its artist’s studio to our city.
In it, acrobats, jugglers and musicians will offer up their very own brush-strokes.
In a way its a stage version of "D’art d’art" (the popular French TV program about art).
Strolling through the corridors of the Prado or Beaubourg, crossing the vast halls of the Tate, the MoMa or a "MAC" something, but for a cheaper entrance price and in only 1 hour 40 minutes, are you tempted? The nearest travel agency where you can book this journey is "la Grainerie" in Balma where the Cirque Plume has stopped by a dozen or so shows. Here you are ready to set off with the "trampoline dancer and her red petals", "the young girl on the wheel", "Tibo for short aka Oui-oui" and the rest of the gang, the best guides for this journey through the world of art. The Artist’s studio sets up its easel in Toulouse. The troupe’s ninth and latest show, has travelled the roads of France and Navarre since its creation in 2009 at the "Grande Halle" in la Villette where it played for three months to sold out crowds. A typical record for the Cirque Plume. Here’s a bit of history: With its origin coming from the dramatic encouragement of Bernard Kudlak, the troupe built up its experience in the 1990s, the hey-day of new-circus. Where for one part, the typical circus acts were not seen as a simple succession of turns but were used to build up a true narrative structure, and for the other part, circus as we knew it, with its acrobatics, clowns, juggling, was intermixing with the other stage crafts: most notably theatre, but also music and dance.
BRUSH-STROKES
Plic Ploc became an ambassadorial piece for this artistic renewal, it was created in 2004 and would be played 398 times in front of a total of 395 000 spectators throughout the world. It is very likely that the Artist’s studio will follow the same road. Here the brush-stroke replaces the incredible flow of water. Fifteen all-round artists come into the studio and bring us the world as seen through the great painting and sculpture masterpieces. Velasquez, Klimt, Miro, Ingres, Soulages, Courbet - the show takes its name one of his works - and so many others are placed next to the German wheel, trampoline and trapeze like in the best Prevert scenarios. And Pollock’s dripping was never really very different to paintball! Beyond diving into the heart of these canvasses, it is the beauty of the scenes set up on the stage that transport the spectators into an imaginary poetic world, lost in Robert Miny’s (live) musical score. "A spectacle made by and for living people: it is full of joy, colour, poetry, filthy, vague, precise, just like life".
Karine Chapert