Ouest France
3 March 2000

Journey into the universe of the New Circus
Plume flies high...

Isabelle LABARRE

On Wednesday the Cirque Plume inaugurated its 15 show tour in the region before an audience almost won over in advance by the triumphant rumours coming from Paris. Quite true, when you have 15 geniuses on the stage, the magic does its work...

A little immaculate feather floats under your nose and manages to wake you up - you - the greatest snorer in the world. It tickles you to the point of sneezing. No, it isn’t your pillow which is losing its down. It comes from higher up, this feather: it’s an angel, of no fixed abode and no fixed god, in a shiny leather coat who has lost it. An angel with a haggard look who takes to the air on a bicycle and ends up carrying off the queen of feathers or rather of the feather duster, "Little Miss Perfect", the concierge of this unlikely place floating between heaven and earth.

Under the earth in fact, there dwells a strange demon, who juggles with hats without feathers, seduced in the end by a magnificent dancer. A woman dances on a wire, another sets a saw singing, another uses her vocal cords to charm the most credible of madmen and the craziest of managers.

" Mélanges " is a farandole of stories which are brought together into a lovely fable through poetry. There is much to do with love. It is beautiful, lively, and violent at times, perhaps as the ambulant world of circus artistes can be. And not just any old circus: this one doesn’t seem to require the standard acts. The Kudlak brothers have recruited geniuses, the Brazilian Osmar and Fanny the cord-charmer among the marvellously well-integrated latest talent. It is around the performance of each one that the adventure of the Cirque Plume is built. To get the message across, the imaginative pen of Bernard Kudlak has evidently drawn inspiration from the story of each one of the singers, dancers, acrobats and musicians, these ladies and gentlemen who do better, whatever people might say, than giving an illusion of polyvalence. They carry on their shoulders the heavy machine of the Cirque Plume, its 11 articulated lorries and its yellow big-top which each evening drinks up the applause of a thousand spectators, but always gives the impression of being very light, as light as feathers...