CIRQUE ICI – JOHANN LE GUILLERM

Part of the project Attraction

Johann Le Guillerm has remarked: “I don’t make new shows, I continue them…” Secret, the vision of a life, reflects this process, fusing continuity, transformation and movement. Since its creation in 2003 at the Channel theatre in Calais, Johann Le Guillerm has sought a circus based on “physical phenomena” that attract. Alone in the ring, under a nomadic tent, he converts each act in the challenge of a confrontation with implausible machines, and in a permanent source of surprises: we find ourselves in the midst of a living laboratory where form interferes with movement, unstable balancing acts are harmonized, and turbulences are brought under control. An endless exploration that the public witnesses in fascination.

Johann Le Guillerm, acrobat, juggler, creator and manipulator of objects, is one of the most unusual figures on the contemporary circus scene. Drawing on the arts and sciences, he doggedly pursues his search for a 360° view of the world. Alone in the ring or in his “laboratory”, he explores and materialises his observations in strange machines, testimony to or expressions of the relationship between man and matter.

Two years after creating the company Cirque ici and when he was only 27 years old, Le Guillerm won the 1996 National Grand Prize for Circus, an award that crowned his career in the arts up till then. In 2001 he undertook a huge multifaceted project, Attraction, which is first and foremost the manifesto of a creator who makes invisible knowledge visible. This “mental circus” signals a utopia, with an all-encompassing eye that scrutinises everything around us, while our modern gaze has for decades been happy to take in only what’s right in front of us. A 360°vision, as imposed by the ring, the circus.

Conception, mise-en-scène and performance Johann Le Guillerm
Live music Alexandre Piques

Production Cirque ici – Johann Le Guillerm
Co-production Le Channel, scène nationale de Calais; Agora, Pôle national des arts du cirque de Boulazac Aquitaine; Excentrique, festival organised by Culture O Centre, Ateliers de développement culturel; Le Manège, scène nationale de Reims; Cirque Théâtre d’Elbeuf – Pôle national des arts du cirque de Haute-Normandie; L’apostrophe, scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise; Le Quartz, scène nationale de Brest; Le Volcan, scène nationale du Havre.
Supported by the French Ministry of Culture (DMDTS and DRAC Île-de-France), the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Institut Français), the Île-de-France Regional Council, the Ville de Paris and the Institut Français/ Ville de Paris.

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