Cie BAL: «Eloge du poil»

Last year, Circus Xanti presented the international performances Petit Mal and Contigo in the Circus Village. This year, Cie BAL from France will present the beautiful performance Eloge du poil that mixes circus, sideshow, music and ventriloquist.

Wednesday August 17th: 20.00
Thursday August 18th: 20.00

Tickets: 250,-/200,- 
Tickets are available at Billettservice

Note that Eloge du poil will perform at Seilduken Scene, Scene 6, and not in the Circus Village.

Seilduken Scene is the stage of Oslo National Academy of the Arts. The address is Fossveien 24, entrance from Steenstrupsgate. Website: www.khio.no/seildukenscene
Map >
More information about the performance and the company can be found here: www.elogedupoil.com

«Eloge du poil»

Here, the bearded lady represents femininity in a way that is all at once mysterious, repulsive … and attractive … from a sort of independence that can neither be mastered nor put into some box. Here, femininity takes on a masculine quality—the beard but with “his” woman’s body.

The bearded woman can say and do anything because she’s not of the conventions of this world. She’s connected intimately to things of the ancient past and so those things come back up to the surface—madness … or extreme lucidity.

In Praise of hairiness, in praise of uselessness, in praise of a certain form of savagery. 
This woman zestfully gives life to dead things: animal skulls, empty shells, egg yolks, things that we throw away after they’ve been used. Discussions between a mountain goat skull, a badger skull, and the head of a bearded lady, the three of them placed on a table, bodiless. The human head cut off from its body, from its physical perception, exactly the same as in our contemporary Western culture. The ventriloquist allows us to play with the possibility of hearing other voices: those which reveal illusion and also the interior voice, the one that tells of things that are hidden away that rarely come to the surface.

The badger character is a buffoon, in direct contact with the audience, liberally making fun, laughing at his own jokes, and thus exhibiting his pathos. The mountain goat is cultivated, professorial; he invites us to slash our wrists in order to observe and savor each stage of our own decomposition.

When the bearded lady manipulates objects or juggles, it’s the body that talks, that moves with purpose, the balancing of objects—bamboo, egg yolks—feet doing the job of hands.

These characters have gone beyond the weaknesses of the human condition. They speak to us of things far away and forgotten, from the bottom of our guts and thus … terribly contemporary.

Credits:
Conception and performance

: Jeanne Mordoj
Direction: Pierre Meunier
Set design and light: Bernard Revel
Music and sound: Bertrand Boss
Set and props: Mathieu Delangle
Stage direction and sound technician
: Eric Grenot

Light technician

: Claire Villard
The bearded lady’s assistant: Victor Fernandes
Costumes: lisabeth Cerqueira, Stéphane Thomas, Tania Dietrich
Graphic design and painting: Camille Sauvage



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