Beaux Arts Magazine
1 December 2018

Cirque Plume bids farewell

Le Cirque Plume fait ses adieux | Beaux Arts Magazine (presse_lds) {PDF}
Playing through December 30 in a big top in la Villette, La Dernière Saison is covering Paris with white feathers of snow. Poetic through and through.

The spectators haven’t all settled in yet, but fallen leaves are already showering down on stage, suggesting a show tinged with a sweet melancholy. For its latest and last creation, Cirque Plume has settled in the heart of the forest: a place conducive to dreamlike and nostalgic wanderings, a place of beauty, anguish and loss, subject to the cycle of the seasons. Along a bed of red leaves, in front of trees painted with charcoal and wood, beside a large canvas left outdoors for months and thus marked by the vagaries of time, strange creatures parade, straight out of Grimm brothers tale or a book by Maurice Sendak. Musicians, acrobats, jugglers and sprites perform joyful acts. The company, formed over thirty years ago, has remained true to its essence: poetry, humor and a troupe spirit. At once joyful, riveting and moving, the farewell show is a celebration in which music is omnipresent, prompting an elf to soar into the air suspended from a hoop, or a woman in white costume who, once night falls, defies the laws of gravity and vertigo with her ascent on a vertical pole. Thrills guaranteed!

“We will go fishing for other dreams on other rivers”

Winter arrives without warning. White feathers are snowing down. Santa Claus has lost his mind. A contortionist wearing skis gets her legs caught in all directions, eliciting shrieks and merriment throughout the house, before her playmates come to her rescue. When red flowers begin to rain down, announcing spring and soon summer, a tightrope walker laughs as if she were drunk, and magically dances on small wires stretched across the space. Decked out in crowns of leaves, light clothing, and animal skins, in an atmosphere worthy of an ancient bacchanal, her acrobatic companions run amok one last time. Since the best things must come to an end, we must say goodbye. What will all the members of the troupe do once they are dispersed? "We will go fishing for other dreams on other rivers," says artistic director Bernard Kudlak. So it’s the end of a cycle, before the birth of new artistic dreams that promise once again to enchant our daily lives.

Daphné Bétard