Balancing and falling are not tricks, but symbols for surrender and trust in circus performance ‘Reclaim’

The tent in which Théâtre d’Un Jour normally increases the performance, broke down, so the company is forced to play in the open air, in the middle of the Rotterdamse Schouwburgplein. That makes a difference. The privacy of a tent, the intimacy and focus that such a setting enforces, the magical Net-Wat-the-reality-to-reality that brings about theater light-they have to do it without putting it.

It is therefore in inexorable daylight that Acrobate Chloé Chevalier with a wooden doll in her arms, a little boy, steps into the slope. She carefully binds him a blindfold, and wraps it in a sheepskin. Four men step onto the round playing surface from the stands. In the ritual that follows we see the performers strolling in repetitive choreographies, with deep, loud voices « Ha! » screaming. Chevalier slides an animal snout on the head and crawls over the white tarpaulin like a pre -world beast. The men take off their shirts, put animal skulls on their heads and grow around as wild dogs around each other. Roughly these muscular, animal creatures jump on the wooden benches, pushing visitors to the side. There is a real threat. There is no room for irony in this slope.

Be human

In addition to the five acrobats, two cellists and an opera singer also participate. People are being used, there is singing. The acrobats look for each other, hesitantly, and look in duos, low to the ground, vibrating, for a joint balance. As there is more physical contact between the performers, the trust between them seems to grow. In turns they fall, and catch each other. The human towers that they build together are increasingly higher. The opera singer also goes up in the air while singing, one of the cellistes continues unperturbed, standing on the shoulders of someone who stands on the shoulders of another.

Gradually the audience is also involved in the exercises. A girl is lifted and carried around by the performers. An older woman is, trembling, on the shoulders of one of the acrobats. With our hands we support the sweaty acrobat that keeps two others in the air. Balance, the jump, the fall – they are in Reclaim No tricks, but symbolically charged images that are about mutual dependence, surrender and trust. About the individual as part of a collective.

When the blindfold goes off the little boy’s doll, he is also raised in the air. New generations will also have to learn to surrender to a collective worn, something like that says that image. Zo recalls Reclaim In fact, you are what being human: living together. Relate to each other, with all the tension, threat, discomfort that that entails. Support each other. Lean on each other. And if we fall: hope to be able to trust that there is someone who catches us.

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