Télérama2 September 2009
Plume’s brushstroke
L’atelier du peintre (The Artist’s studio). From and by Cirque Plume.
The company brings its magic to the world of painters and painting, in spite of some lumbering scholarly interludes.
It was so beautiful, how the water flowed through Plic Ploc, that wonderful production from Cirque Plume, so light and full of musicality. And how heavy the current brushwork in L’Atelier du peintre, a show that, it’s true, is still quite new, barely taken down from the picture rail. After giving us a symphony of raindrops, Bernard Kudlak, founder of the legendary troop from Franche -Comté, takes us on a tour through his imaginary museum: Velasquez with Las Meninas, Ingres with La Grande Odalisque, Soulages and Klein for contemporary art and a smattering of Klein. As Pierre Kudlak would say, the eloquent guide through this gallery thrown open to the general public: "Le noir, ça Soulages (Black, that’s a relief)." It would only need a little tweaking - mainly fewer academic and less laboured references - for the magic to shine through. The Franche -Comté troop employs some clever tricks, such as projected shadows that complement the rhythm of the balls. The trampoline provides surprising re-workings of domestic situations. The impassive odalisque stirs into life at the sight of an irresistible acrobat. Drawings appear all by themselves inside their frames. The scene with the dancing frames, anonymous and clumsy, tips over into a delicious moment of pure absurdity. It’s full of imagery, magical, everything that we like so much... Plume, the company that was formed twenty five years ago in Besançon, regenerates itself with every new show. The new recruits (Kristina Dniprenko, on the German wheel; Antoine Nicaud, on the trampoline; Tibo Tout Court, the diminutive juggling clown) carry on the tradition valiantly. With a few less puns and a bit more fantasy, this pictorial and literary display would be less like the Almanach Vermot and become an excellent popular show, a sensitive and personal odyssey.
Mathieu Braunstein