Décrochez-moi-ça

Beneath a suspended set, on a circular ring and in an intimate arena, you are invited into a singular world where awkwardness and feats, the little things and the extraordinary, appearances and pretence meet.

There will be bodies floating and swinging, alone and magnificent. There will be hats manipulated by a man who is himself being manipulated. There will be piles of coats, the shedding of jackets, heaps of pea coats, frock coats flying through the air, bodices being stripped away, jackets unfolding, silk dripping. There will be violins, guitars, keyboards, percussion, unusual objects, happy accidents, beings who are brass bands and bodies that are orchestras.

A timeless, dreamlike circus that carries souls to the very depths of humanity.

About – Bêtes de foire

Bêtes de Foire was born from the meeting of Laurent Cabrol, a circus artist, and Elsa De Witte, a costume designer and performer. After training with Annie Fratellini and Lan N’Guyen, Laurent co-founded the circuses Convoi Exceptionnel and Trottola, while pursuing numerous artistic collaborations with Raphaëlle Delaunay, Cirque Romanès and Théâtre du Rugissant, where he reunited with Elsa. She, for her part, comes from street theatre companies, notably Cie Babylone, and nurtures her love of simple, popular stories while further developing her practice of repurposing used materials, which she recycles and embellishes.

Their first show, Bêtes de Foire – petit théâtre de gestes, was created in 2013 and brought together all their expertise to build a show with a singular universe: circus, through its tragic emotion and the disciplines performed, but also puppetry and object theatre, through characters manipulated in full view of the audience; dance, through the body language created by movement; all infused with the gestures and sensibility of silent cinema. The show received the SACD Circus Arts Award in 2015 and has been performed no fewer than 700 times across France and Europe.

For Décrochez-moi-ça, the team grows to include several artistic collaborators. First, there are Bastien Pelenc and Thomas Barrière, whose 20 years of working together have spanned cine-concerts, documentary theatre, their duo Algecow, street arts and dance performances, film music, sound poetry and Cirque Trottola. The musical duo continually explores and refines its instrumental practice, at the intersection of physical prowess, timbral polyphony and the beautiful gesture combined with the right sound. For Décrochez-moi-ça, they compose the music together and then perform it in alternation. Next comes Stéphane Laisné, replacing Simon Rosant. He performs a visible stage management role during the show.

With this production, Bêtes de Foire continues its itinerant journey with its radiant menagerie, extends its exploration of the distortion of time and creative processes, and returns to the central ring, the anchor point of circus.