Cirque WinterFest 2023-24

Light is fighting against darkness
like with a small sibling,
playfully, make-believe.
It allows his small rival to fill in the figures
that are jumping on the fabric slopes of a huge tent
with a black color.

Darkened by no light
and enlarged to the size of the Greek Gods
by soffits that are shedding light,
women- and men-like silhouettes are making circles
in the circle of the circled tribunes.

There is something ritual in the way
the performance is made.
It seems that even with modern spotlights
people and their shadows
are whirling around an actual fire
that was built under the pointed roof of the marquee,
from the top of which somebody on the sky
has been twitching a thread
and, perhaps, in a second would pull the whole cover off.
But people will carry on howling, crying, dancing
to drum beats.

Doom-doom-doom
poom-poom

Doom-doom-doom
poom-poom

Their bodies, flexible and pliable wax,
are sliding along the rope
or climbing a pole up and up to the pic
of the patchy shelter.

And then - a fall,
and then - a sigh of fear from the audience,
and then - a sudden stop in 5 centimeters above the floor.

A black sea of eyes, heads, whispers around the circle of scene
has breathed out with relief or - with upset?

There is something ancient in sitting around the fire,
making a dark ring,
observing how someone fights, rejoices, falls, jumps,
burns out in forks of flame and reborns or
becomes ashes.



The story was told,
a tragic one, a funny one, a reminicent one,
and for a moment we have played a role of the silent Gods,
who usually sit above our heads,
watchung our agony in the amphitheater of life,
whom we usually envy...

But then
the thread had been finally twitched
and everything pulled off.

As sudden as we were transported to the past,
we have found ourselves returned to our lives

to go through them and to set there

our own fire.



December, 2023