Oh, what a circus!
PANTSULA and gumboot dance, traditional stick-fighting, singing, a pole act featuring dry leaves, trapeze bars and trumpets … all come into play in a unique travelling show, circus-inspired, that is scheduled for a performance in Durban tomorrow.
Conceived and presented by a creative team from Reunion Island and featuring a member of Cape Town’s Zip Zap Circus, the production is La Pli I Donn, presented by Cirquon Flex, a multidiscipline performance troupe which toured their first production, Points de Suspension, locally last year.
The colourful team integrates contemporary circus, music, poetry and dance from Reunion Island, Madagascar and South Africa.
The local performance of La Pli I Donn will be at 7pm on Thursday at the Courtyard Theatre on the Berea campus of the Durban University of Technology, where free workshops with the touring troupe were set for yesterday and today for DUT second-year drama students.
The aim is to offer the students the opportunity to network with international artists on tour in South Africa and allow the opportunity of discovering new disciplines and skills they would be able to use in the future.
Tickets for the show (R50 each) are available from Alliance Francaise at 031 312 9582 or can be bought at the theatre on the day.
The South African member of Cirquons Flex – which is also scheduled to perform at Gauteng’s Joburg Theatre at 3pm on Sunday and at Cape Town’s Zip Zap Circus at 6.30pm on Wednesday, September 21 – is 30-year-old Lizo James from Khayelitsha in the Cape.
He has trained with Zip Zap Circus since the age of 11, and travelled with that troupe to Denmark in 1990.
Suggested by Zip Zap Circus when Cirquon Flex asked for someone local who could add to the touring team, James has also toured France with Cirquon Flex.
The troupe’s latest show has him showcasing his talents as a singer, gumboot dancer and acrobat, alongside Virginie le Flaouter (Reunion/France), Vincent Maillot (Reunion/France) and Maheriniaina Pierre Ranaivoson of Chapitô (Madagascar).
La Pli I Donn, says James, is a poignant and moving show about how different cultures in Africa can come together.
He was delighted to get the chance to work with the troupe, which first made contact with Zip Zap Circus four years ago, for an exchange of skills via creative interaction.
“After the South African tour we will perform in Maputo in Mozambique on September 23 and 24, then plan another tour of France later this year,” says James.
“We started off with a threemonth ‘creation phase’ in Lamar, Reunion Island, which took place over a month of us working from 9am to 6pm.
La Pli I Donn mixes circus performance, music, sound and visual recordings, multilingual texts and traditional and fusional dances. The show addresses the themes of encounters, exchanges and ecological issues.
“The experience was really something different compared to Zip Zap – it was a lot more of an ‘out of the box’-type of work as opposed to being choreographed. I found it weird at first, but soon got the hang of it,” says James.
“The more we created, the better things got. We had to come up with our own ideas which was great, and we did a presentation on Reunion Island before we performed the show in France.”
The colourful production builds on the experience and encounters brought about during Cirquons Flex’s travels and residencies in India, Madagascar and South Africa during the past two years.
When the show stops touring, James will return to Cape Town early next year, to celebrate Zip Zap Circus’s 25th anniversary.
“We have a plan to expand into a bigger building and to stage a show to celebrate and raise funds.”