Photo — Jean-Marc Helies
Cirque Le Roux’s La Nuit du Cerf was nominated for a 2020 Molière (création visuelle).
Onstage, six circus artists perform a show inspired by cinematography, bringing together circus, theatre, music and video projection, all in an early 1970s aesthetic.
“Life shouldn’t be a one-way trip to the grave with the goal of arriving safely in a pretty, well-preserved body, but rather a swerve down the back roads in a cloud of smoke that we walk out of worn out, exhausted, and proclaiming loudly, ‘What a ride!’”
This original creation with multiple inspirations mixes French New Wave and the 1970s American Grindhouse movement to tell a story that is simultaneously funny, strange and unsettling.
Miss Betty has died…. Her three children have come back again to the family home at the end of a road on the edge of a forest to plan her funeral.
Suddenly, with tires screeching to a halt, a mysterious disheveled stranger arrives. That changes everything: the recently reunited family settles accounts, tears into each other, loves each other, grabs each other, laughs, gaffaws, cries, dances, slips…and the funeral derails.
La Nuit du Cerf puts a group of stunning, colourful, charismatic and funny characters onstage.
It’s a work that reminds us of the uniqueness, the fragility and the tenderness of human relationships. Six virtuoso circus artists perform balancing acts, hand to hand, banquine, acrobatics, aerial cradle, tightrope walking… The physical risk taking and the emotional depth are the company’s creative choice and their challenge.
La Nuit du Cerf is an homage to cinema, contemporary circus, and humanity in all its comedy, clumsiness and splendor.
