Abendzeitung (D)28 June 1996
"The Plume" go into a spîn above Olympus
The Circus : a poetic happening thanks to the Cirque Plume
Imagine : Marcel Marceau and "Bip", Charlie Rivel and "the dopey Red-nosed Clown" get together to put on the circus of their dreams; and the Marx Brothers let them in on their games a little. All that, that’s what you get with the Cirque Plume.
Plume means, literally a bird’s feather, but it also means a quill or a pen. And it is with feathery lightness that the French troupe has signed its name on the world of the circus. It is a group in which everyone can do almost everything, whether an acrobot on the ground or in the air, they are all musicians. Whether it’s someone in charge of stage directions or a white clown. The real star is the group. And here the spell has its own type of magic.
Copperfield and the others thrill us with all their special effects. With Plume, it is with the soul and the spirit alone that illusions take on that sensational quality. Images follow one upon the other, each fitting into the other like a kaleidoscope. They end up by becoming an immense picture of an opulent and marvellous bodily harmony.
Who are the characters ?
A cunning magician doing spells, (at a certain point he is dressed up as a girl). A crazy cyclist who takes to the air on a trampoline. A tightrope dancer and her partner, the white clown. Shadows, even, playing around in a never-ending search for happiness : a little man becomes a Giant, discovers Love and takes refuge in the pose of Rodin’s Thinker. And of course there is also the music, music which carries us along, always finding just the right note in this immense work of art.
The waves of successive images seem without end. However, once the Diva has seen the collapse of the terrible live piano, once Eve has watered Adam’s sex, it is time to discover the final tableau. It is composed of scenes from the calendar for Advent, variations on a divine pas de deux, on the comic and the erotic, on happiness and pain.
And over it all floats the costume of the white clown, symbol of our existance. Lastly, musical saws sing us a soft, sweet melody. We go off cautiously, bringing with us this precious soap bubble, and a childlike wish that it will never ever burst.
Title of photo : Play of shadow and muscles for the quest of the eternal. In projected light, a little man becomes a Giant, and ends up as Rodin’s Thinker ... at least, at the Cirque Plume.