Mar 11 2010: It’s circus…but not as we know it!
THE word circus tends to conjure up a certain image for English audiences…moth eaten animal acts, tawdry feathers, tarnished sequins and clowns with a collective humour bypass.
But Traces, the new show from Canadian company Les 7 Doigts de la Main, explodes every expectation of circus as we remember it with a dazzling, dizzying evening that forces a re-evaluation of what circus is all about.
This is a show that has its audience gasping in terror, cheering the impossible and yelling for more at the end of an exhilarating night of dance, music, gymnastics, comedy and general craziness.
There’s not an elephant in sight, just a company of five amazing performers who together, in what seems to be a tumbledown bunker on the eve of apocalypse, throw themselves into the last couple of hours of life as we know it with an inexhaustible abandon and enthusiasm.
“We call it contemporary circus,” explains Genevieve Morin, the only woman in the athletic quintet.
“We feel there’s a young vibe to the show and in contemporary circus there are no rules, you’re just allowed to do anything, use video projections or drawing – absolutely anything you can put on stage.”
Even international hit Cirque du Soleil doesn’t offer quite the same experience as this production, where glitzy production values are replaced by raw energy, passion and good humour.
“It’s much more intimate than Cirque du Soleil,” Genevieve says. “Because we are only five, we are really involved in the show and for the audience you feel that you really know the artists by the end of the show.”
Genevieve began the journey that would take her into this surreal circus world when she was just six years old and training in both dance and gymnastics in a small town near the French Canadian city of Montreal.
“It is important to start young in many different activities, to build up the muscles and all that,” she says. “I was in my first dance class at six maybe but it wasn’t really pushed because I came from a very little town.”
That said, she did eventually make her way to dance college and it was while she was there that she accompanied a friend to Montreal’s famous Ecole National de Cirque and her life took a complete change of direction as she herself was offered a place at one of the world’s most famous circus schools.
She graduated in 2008 and along with partner Antoine Auger – with whom she now performs in Traces – appeared at New York City’s famous Spiegeltent before joining Les 7 Doigts de la Main in 2009.
Traces had first been developed by Les 7 Doigts in 2006 but this is not the sort of show that stays the same forever and, as Genevieve points out, the current international touring company have taken the material and made it entirely their own.
“The show is really based on who you are,” she says. “You are not playing a character, you are really yourself on stage so we are very different from the original cast.
“The structure remains the same but we all bring our own specialities to it and there are circus techniques in the show now that were not there originally because they come with the artists.”
Genevieve’s specialities – not including being able to bring a moment of calm to the proceedings with an elegant attempt at Bach on a battered piano – include a breathtaking aerial display and hand-to-hand work with partner Antoine, though injury can mean no two shows are ever the same.
“Antoine was injured in our last city so we have had to cut the hand-to-hand section and rebuild around it,” she says.
“Your body always hurts, there is always some place that hurts even if there is not an injury. You just work with it.
“We try always to keep ourselves in shape by doing stretches and things like that but there is risk in the things you do and you can’t avoid that.
“Circus is based on danger and that’s why the audience like it – it’s fun when you’re in your seat watching a show where you don’t know what might happen next!”
Traces by Les 7 Doigts de la Main comes to the Crucible in Sheffield from March 22 to 24 as part of the Danceworks UK Spring Season.
