Workshop with XY: Melting in hugs
by Swantje Kawecki
Paris, more than ten years ago. The company XY performs the opening for the big Circus Festival Cirque du Demain. Intrigued and fascinated by the way their bodies moved, how they worked together as a group. My younger self began to dream of a career as a circus performer and acrobat that would lead to working in this company. And I was not alone in this: generations of circus school graduates probably still share this fascination, this dream of mine. The landscape of European circus would certainly not be the same without XY. And a workshop at the CircusDanceFestival revealed what makes this company so special.
XY, the French company has been working with group acrobatic and choreographic principles for around 20 years now. Their approach remains far-reaching and influential: By embedding group acrobatics within choreography, they shifted away from the idea that acrobatic movement needs to be somehow executed separately — before returning to the story or narrative thread. Instead, movement itself became the narrative thread. Movement became the language, a form of encounter on stage, living images unfolding in motion.I have seen two pieces by XY: “Möbius” and “Les Voyages”, during this festival I will see Möbius for a third time. What distinguishes this group from others, what makes their performances worth seeing again and again?
It is first of all the movement vocabulary they have developed over the years, at the intersection of circus and dance. However, there is additionally something remarkable about the sheer number of performers on stage. The presence of so many people, some of them older than what is common to see in a circus context (above 40), brings a force and magic to the stage that is utterly captivating. The piece, inspired by swarm behaviour, brings together so many layers within the world of high-level acrobatics creating interactions between them that it never ceases to move me.
While XY’s acrobats perform at an exceptionally high technical level in terms of circus technique, the works are not primarily about virtuosity. They are about the strength of the group, about trust, about connectedness — about creating something that can only come into being by working together. So, when the CircusDanceFestival offered the opportunity to join a workshop led by two acrobats from the Company XY, of course I had to take it.
Friday morning at the Creation Centre for Contemporary Circus Cologne: Guillaume Sendron and Kritonas Anastasopoulos will share their working methods and movement research with us and guide our diverse group through principles and movement research they have developed and worked with over the years. We are a group of 25 people, some professional circus artists or dancers, some advanced hobby acrobats.
Being familiar with the work of XY, I expected a workshop based on their group acrobatics. Instead, we spent at least half of the four hours together with both feet firmly on the floor. To start with, they invited us to get to know each other by ‘simply’ walking and opening up our senses.
Let’s walk together, share the space, try to be equally spread out. Do you see each other? Do you know, who is walking behind you without checking? Let’s walk and then, after a while, find the moment to stop together as a whole group. Share the information through your body. If you are suddenly going to stop, the group will experience a delay. Tune in, do it together.
Now find the moment to start walking again, all together, at the same time. See who is with you, meet each other’s eyes. Be grounded and active at the same time. Stand in front of the next person you meet. Look each other in the eyes, see them, connect, what is beautiful about them?
Leave and meet another person. Connecting with our eyes, then with a hand on a shoulder or an arm. Shifting to guiding a person with their eyes closed through the space by holding one hand, the other one on their upper arm. Or by gently guiding one person to the floor.
What started as work on the floor is later transferred into heights. Two people standing on top of each other’s shoulders. The so-called base - the person who is carrying - holds the calves of the person on top, then melts down into the floor, to one side, soft and gentle. The flyer - the person standing on top of the shoulders - curves their body in the same direction the base is melting towards. The people around, receiving the flyer gently help them down to the floor, hugging the base and melting with them down into the floor until the whole group is laying like a landscape of bodies in one single line.
Time and again, Kritonas Anastasopoulos und Guillaume Sendron emphasise how important the connection to the ground is, the connection between people – the human, the emotional aspect, the 'how' rather than the ‘what’. Before we can build high, fly through the air and catch each other, we need to get familiar with the floor and the people around us. Find a common language, communicate with the others in the room, to give them time to understand and react in time. 360º awareness, sensing the group, seeing each other and in the end slowing down is what helps to build a common ground, trust, our relationship and human connection.
Bringing together a group of people with different levels of experience and skills for only four hours is not an easy thing to do, although in the end, bodies were flying at some point and three people stood on top of one another. It was not what I expected in the beginning, but sharing the time with Guillaume and Kritonas, interacting with the other movers during the workshop, was an enriching experience.
The workshop revealed how much time, trust and precision it takes to transform acrobatic technique into the softness and fluidity that defines the work of the company XY.
And, most of all, how important it is for circus artists to meet, learn from one another and be inspired. A cultural landscape can grow and flourish when there is room for exchange, when we are introduced to new ideas. Whilst contemporary circus in France has encompassed a broad cultural landscape since the 1970s, in Germany we still call it a young art form. Inviting established companies to Cologne, not having to travel to Paris to see their work and, most importantly, engaging in dialogue as professional artists, is a valuable step for the development of the circus scene in Germany. It takes encounters, spaces and financial opportunities for the circus scene in Germany to eventually flourish the same way it did in France 50 years ago.