360 ° I: What Remains?
by Tana Onochie
The 360-degree format of the CircusDanceFestival is something special: four pieces, each lasting around ten minutes, are presented within an hour – two solo and two duo works. Not too long, not too short. Here, you don’t have to ‘work your way through’ an entire evening, but quickly get a sense of different styles, atmospheres and physicalities. This gives the evening a liveliness, an openness. It’s less about immersing yourself completely in a single piece, and more about perceiving many different approaches side by side – and about asking more questions than providing answers.
The spatial arrangement also plays a major role: the stage is circular, the audience spread out around it. In this setting, you’re not just watching the performance, but always observing the other audience members. You notice how differently they react, how their gaze wanders, or how their attention shifts. This was also the case on the first evening: particularly during the first piece by the artist Shu-Huan Chang, the children reacted strongly to the artist’s clownish manner. They burst out laughing repeatedly, following each movement with great attention. This direct engagement immediately brought a sense of lightness and playfulness into the space.
Overall, what remains of the 360-degree format are less complete dramaturgical structures than individual images: With the juggler Liza Van Brakel, for example, it is above all that one club. The reduction to so little material generated an astonishing amount of drive. Her movements, too, had a calm flow that set them apart from classical juggling, since she was not trying to do ‘too much all at once’. The piece was carried above all by her presence and the rhythm of her movements.
In the short version of “Still Dwelling” by Johanna Gorzellik, the tension between fragility and strength is particularly striking. Nothing about it is unambiguous or fully resolved, and yet one experiences the tension almost physically: the whole body is electrified.
Perhaps the most compelling performance, however, is that of the duo from Compagnie Cirk Oblique, featuring the performers Marie Mercadal and Sophie Lombard. Particularly striking is the image of Sophie Lombard moving ever higher in her wheelchair, whilst all eyes are fixed on her. An incredibly powerful moment.
At the same time, the performance raises important questions that deserve more discussion within the circus scene: How can equality be achieved on stage when the standard in the circus is often still an able-bodied, highly trained body? How can appreciation be not only asserted, but actually shared and made visible?
Some moments therefore also cause a sense of unease. The final image, for instance, in which Marie Mercadal stands on the wheelchair and is thus physically elevated above Sophie Lombard. Or another scene in which she herself sits in the wheelchair and moves it. These moments show a certain ambivalence. On the one hand, they were visibly about closeness, trust and collaboration. On the other hand, at times it also felt like an intrusion into a very personal space. In the context, the wheelchair seems as a neutral object or a prop, but as part of the body and the everyday movement of the person using it.
The piece does not simply resolve questions of support, dependency, power relations and equality, it leaves them for the audience to decide. Perhaps that is also why it fits so well with the whole evening: what remains are not so much definitive statements as images, tensions and questions. The brevity of the works in particular reinforces this. The pieces did not have to explain everything or bring things to a complete close. Rather, they opened up states of being that continue to resonate afterwards. And that is precisely why the format worked so well.