The audience determines how much it will hurt. The Cirkopolis festival bound and freed at the same time

New circus art is traditionally seen in Letenské sady, where respected international groups present themselves at the Letní Letná festival. Since the time when the genre was perceived as marginal in our country, it gained importance a long time ago, and in terms of scope and commercial use, it has shifted to mainstream, not exactly cheap pastimes.

In many ways, the Cirkopolis festival is more subtle, though dramaturgically focused and open, which together with the Akropolis Palace has been organizing the center for the new Cirqueon circus for ten years.

It focuses on more intimate and above all artistic types or styles that go beyond production. He prefers authors combining new circus elements with contemporary dance, physical and visual theater or musical experimentation. Their creation is often preceded by artistic research. Last year, for example, prominent Belgian performer Alexander Vantournhout, whose choreography defies human anatomy, or Italian multidisciplinary artist Claudio Stellato participated. He exposed the performers and the audience to a borderline experience. He searched for the relationship between the body and matter in the physically exhausting Work project among the hectoliters of paint that the actors covered the object on the stage, in order to totally destroy it at the end.

With each subsequent edition, it seems that Cirkopolis and its artistic director Šárka Maršíková are much more interested in the essence of scenic creation in the 21st century, the variants of human being on stage, and erasing even the last differences between art and life, even with the knowledge of an uncertain outcome, than the new circus.

This consideration was materialized this year in the EZ project by the Spanish performer Elena Zanzu, who identifies herself outside of gender polarity and uses the pronouns they or he. “Basque EZ, which means NO in Czech, is actually an invitation to YES, which is only possible when NO is also a possibility,” explains the title of the work, which arose from many years of research.

In the production, the audience decides how much time and how intensely the performer’s body, specifically the head, will face pain. The author, hanging upside down on a hanging rope, first ritually cleans her face with water from a container also hanging, which in itself has an effective effect. Subsequently, he lets the hair dryer run on another rope and dries himself properly. At this point, the exaggeration ends and the stress test of the skull, of humanity in general, begins.

Zanzu wraps the rope around his head several times, creating a kind of harness on it, by which he will hang himself and thus secure the helpers hanging together from the auditorium. Even for a person ignorant of gravity, it is obvious that the higher the height and movement, the stronger the pressure on the skull will be. Despite this, or maybe because of this, there are those who cause her pain. Among the audience at the Ponec Theater in Prague, there is no one who would step out of the role of a passive, and therefore approving observer of the action.

The audience takes a similar attitude towards the final dragging of the artist’s body across the stage, in which the entire first row of the hall participates without hesitation. He willingly pulls the rope. Everything happens quickly, and the project seems to confirm the thesis about the absence of humanity in those who consider the pain of others. The question is whether the performer would not move them if she showed emotions. She is so vague and uncharismatic on stage that she hardly hits anyone. He either hides most of the pain or even enjoys it. In that case, it would be appropriate to talk about art therapy rather than a work of art. But then it would be pointless to evaluate him in any way.

On the other hand, the project of two French acrobats, Arno Ferrera and Gilles Polet, called Cuir, i.e. Skin, is thoughtful and conceptual in terms of working with physicality.

Tightly bound together, they coexist body to body, dressed in specially adapted horse harnesses. Thanks to them and bold positions and touches, they refer to different versions of the relationship between two bodies throughout history.

We can see in it a hint of Greco-Roman wrestling and in general the idea of ​​masculinity in physical strength. The well-known pair of a master and his slave also emerges from ancient culture, which, in a changed meaning, is also prescribed in one contemporary sexual practice.

The magic of the circus duet about attraction and attraction lies in the breadth of possible interpretations the choreography provides and the humor with which it maneuvers between them. The performers are each other’s friends and allies, attacking each other with force or erotically exciting them with their touch. Harnesses are used for technical grips and belays, they also demonstrate the idea of ​​a bound body through which a person reaches liberation.

It is amazing to watch the often dangerous work with the body, the physical preparation and the dedication to the purpose, which both creators show as one body and one soul.

The Cirkopolis festival does not caress the fur like the new circus matadors. It offers an all the more consistent probe into the ever-developing discipline and, above all, which is a rarity in international events today, it is not afraid of confrontation. With a clear vision, he paves the way of permanent search.