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[INDEX]
 Cirque
Plume: Mélanges (Opéra Plume)
Lincoln Center Festival
July 15, 2001
Americans don’t get many opportunities to sample the new French performing
arts genre known as nouveau cirque (new circus), a hybrid art form blending
music, dance, magic, gymnastics, and comedy. Only major festivals such
as Charleston’s Spoleto Festival and New York’s Lincoln Center Festival
can afford to invite circuses from France, given the cost and logistics
of importing tents, seating, air conditioning, rigging, etc. Yet when
a nouveau cirque show arrives, American audiences flock to satisfy their
curiosity.
The Lincoln Center Festival has already hosted three nouveau cirques:
Le Cercle Invisible in 1997, Les Arts Sauts in 1999 and Les Colporteurs
in 2000. This summer they welcome the renowned Cirque Plume, one of the
first nouveau cirques, formed in 1984 in Besançon. Even in a field as
new as nouveau cirque, experience counts. Cirque Plume has been around
a long time, has trained many performers for other circuses, and still
has six of its nine founding members. To judge by the quality of their
latest show, seen on July 15, this troupe sets the standard in its field.
The show Mélanges/Opéra Plume was created by founding member
Bernard Kudlak in 1999. The dreamlike plot brings together a working class
band (electric guitar, keyboard, accordion, bass) and a circus troupe
(juggler, tumblers, trapeze, and tightrope walker) who mix it up on stage
as a Carol Burnett-like charlady called Little Miss Perfect (Fanny Soriano)
pursues her dream of becoming a performer like the folks she cleans up
after. She is protected by a scruffy guardian angel (Jacques Schneider),
who helps her realize her dreams when he isn’t bicycling across the sky.
The plume of the title is a feather which recurrs throughout the show
to symbolize everyone’s inspiration and dreams.
The loosely structured series of surreal tableaux foreground the remarkable
talents of the troupe’s stars: juggler Iris who shuffles three hats with
the illusive dexterity of Marcel Marceau; tightrope-walker Brigitte Sepaser
who provides her own sound effects on a miked wire; acrobat Christophe
Carrasco who swarms up and down the hanging straps and tumbles with lithe
Brazilian gymnast Osmar Pedro de Souza; and trapeze artist Sophie Mandoux.
Each scene creates its own little world of magic with a striking image,
a joke, a shadow play, or mini-ballet. The scenes are accompanied by apt
and atmospheric music by Robert Miny, including a rockin’ Hendrix homage,
medieval chant, café chantant, and folk music. The instrumental playing
and singing is amazingly professional for a group of athletes.
Despite erratic air-conditioning and uncomfortable benches, the nearly
two-hour show passed quickly, a blurr of entertainment and enchantment.
Nouveau cirque attracts millions of spectators each year in France. On
this side of the Atlantic, it will probably never compete with the traditional
big budget, tiger and elephant-filled three-ring shows. Nor do they want
to. Nouveau cirque is proud to be animal free, and to appeal to audience’s
imagination rather than rely on showy extravaganza and dangerous stunts.
Each of Cirque Plume’s ten Lincoln Center performances - held in their
own yellow, 935-seat tent - was well attended and enthusiastically received.
Judging by the positive audience response, it is only a matter of time
before the US creates its own nouveau cirque tradition.
Cirque Plume is at Lincoln Center Festival through July 21.
Lincoln Center Festival continues through July 29.
> More about Cirque Plume..
> Lincoln Center Festival.
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