Cirque Éloize

Nebbia

The fog that would float down when we visited my grandparents would swallow up the entire house. The neighborhood disappeared, followed by the entire village. Standing on the living room balcony, I would spy on the void, and when the sky was very low, I would see strange things. The waves of the sea licked the garden gate and hallucinations paraded along the row of poplar trees. I’d watch as lovers chased after one another. I’d see camels, elephants, soldiers returning from war… Once, I even saw myself float by. I was all grown up, driving a red car. It was often, or should I say always, a carnival...

The sound of the sea was omnipresent. And when the fog lifted, mullet and bass would be lying on the road. Once, we even found a fishing boat in the village square, an entire fishing boat. Yet the ocean was 300 kilometers from my grandparents’ house.

There are other types of fog, fog that slips down over our eyes, drawing a thin veil between us and those who are already elsewhere. For some time, a fog has floated between my grandmother and me; I look a little blurred to her. Sometimes I’m my grandfather as a younger man, or in the flash of a second, just some stranger, some shadow. My grandmother has gone to the other side of the sky, which was very low. Occasionally, we see her, as the little girl we never knew, as the young woman who turned my grandfather’s head, the old olive tree planted in the garden by an ancestor…

From a very early age, I’ve been fascinated by acrobatics. Fascinated by the movement that defies the laws of gravity, that combines strength and lightness, precision, synchronicity, confidence, surprise and risk. I like what goes unexpressed in theater, the veiled gesture that remains invisible.

When the sky is very low, we see things we don’t normally see. We travel in a world of memories, invented images, what we call dreams for the sake of convenience. To tell my tale of a childhood that is re-invented each time, I use geometries and the lucidity of acrobatic theatre danced on stage by an extraordinary group of performers.

- Daniele Finzi Pasca, Author & Director

Rain

I come from a family of photographers. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father were all photographers. Later, my mom took up painting. I grew up in a world where memories were made up of moments snatched from time and frozen forever. In my shows, I simply make these images move.

The story takes place in a theatre where a circus show is in rehearsal, where theatre and reality blend into one another and you can't tell where one begins and the other ends. The protagonists exchange glances revealing little love stories, secret passions, flashes of intimacy. Their fragilities have slowly blossomed, surfacing in the ultimate moments of effort in the interplay of extreme equilibria. The artists are out of the past, characters from collections of old photos, handsome and strong like our grandparents. And then there is the sky, a vast sky.

When I was little, when the first summer storm came, I was allowed to go out in the garden and play in the rain and get soaked to the skin. I still love that feeling of freedom — shoes full of water, clothes drenched, hair dripping. "Let it rain," we'd say. It was as if we welcomed whatever came from the sky, sun or rain, we didn't care.

Unexpected things can come from the sky: messages, signs, promises. On our stage, not only rain will fall. Surprises will pour down as well.

There's a certain kind of feeling in this show, almost a sense of nostalgia, like a strange need to go back to the house you came from, the house where a family once lived, where your roots are. In our house we called this kind of beautiful, sweet sadness that you feel when you look at a sunset, "rain in your eyes."

I want this show to be like a caress, simple, direct, filled with sensuality and tender hope. The protagonists in this adventure appear and gaze searchingly at the audience from the front of the stage. They begin a dialogue with the spectators, looking them straight in the eye. Then they are once again swallowed up by the surreal images of the story.

If I had to describe this show, I would say it is full of hope, joy, and a sweet longing, and that it is made of the stuff of my grandmother's stories. I dedicate it to all those who love to feel the rain pouring down on them.

- Daniele Finzi Pasca, Author & Director