The opening show of the Montreal completely circus festival, After the night, by Benoit Landry and Nord Nord Est, offers the public a waking, invigorating and graceful dream. Until July 16 at TOHU.
Posted at 7:22
Icarus dreamed of flying, but according to the myth he got too close to the sun, which burned his wings. Nothing like it in After the night at TOHU. The show, staged by Benoit Landry and Nord Nord Est, flies as high as the 65 feet of the circus hall allow without ever falling.
In the center of the stage, literally and figuratively, the music of the group Chances (Geneviève Toupin, Vincent Carré and Chloé Lacasse) unfolds during the show practically without interruption. This mixture of electro, pop, songs and world music tackles universal subjects – life, death, love – in a style as aerial as what the dozen acrobats and dancers give us to see.
From the start, After the night is more a dream than an awakening, with a fairy aerialist number – Angelica Bongiovonni – seeming to come out of a magical world to the sound of music that is both atmospheric and mysterious. The rest of the show will be of the same order, alternating aerial and ground acts to, one suspects, give the spectators a break!
But the essence of the matter is in the flight and the elevation suggested by the artistic choices of the craftsmen. In this sense, three magnificent giant structures, reminiscent of chandeliers, are suspended from the ceiling of the room and serve as launching platforms for the acrobats.
In the air, at more or less high altitude, the numbers of balance on soft wire, straps, hoop, ropes, fixed trapeze and oh so spectacular trapeze-bungee blend perfectly into the director’s vision. scene Benoit Landry. He thus succeeds in playing with the temporality of the representation by taking us completely out of the concreteness of daily reality.
All the senses solicited
Several passages of the different numbers take place in semi-darkness, which adds to the somnambulistic character of the show. However, the circular stage and the presence of the musicians in the center mean that certain numbers are not entirely visible to part of the public, depending on where you are seated in the room.
In terms of individual performances, let’s highlight the exceptional work of the original Antino Pansa with soft wire and acrobatics, the powerful Benjamin Courtnay with aerial straps, the reckless Sabine Van Rensburg with the smooth rope, the frail but strong Angelica Bongiovonni at the Cyr wheel and the graceful Antoine Boissereau, both in straps and in dance.
On this subject, although some repetitive choreography seemed superfluous to us, we understand that it is a question of filling the time between various numbers, this allows us to say that there is no real dead time in this show. All our senses are solicited by the many actions on the ground and in the air. Our ears are particularly charmed by the voices of singers and musicians Geneviève Toupin and Chloé Lacasse and by the subtle percussionist Vincent Carré.
After the night never turns into a nightmare. On the contrary, it is a show full of vigor and optimism that allows us to dream a little after two years of pandemic crisis.
After the night
From Benoit Landry and North North East
At TOHU until July 16, 2022
★★★½
