a LINE in the SKY An TRAIT dans le CIEL

Poem in body on a page of sky.

Contemporary circus - tight rope balancing - live music and text

Duration : 40 minutes

Conceived, performed and written by :

Jérôme d’Orso - tight rope

Composition, musical interpretation :

Fanch – guitar, percussion

Viviane – violin, éléctro

As is so often the case, myth, spirituality and the quest for existence lie between art and science.

A taut cable : 12 millimetres in diameter,

a horizontal line of elastic steel,

for a world of play.

Jérôme d'Orso : For the past 25 years,

Jérôme has this drastically limited context into

artistic investigations using dance, acrobatics and the

body's expressivity, as well as in-depth research into balance and the kinetic laws that govern our world.

Between art and science, myth, spirituality and the existential quest.

Intention : With « a LINE in the SKY », the inten-

tion is to showcase this quest, and to share the fundamental notions and principles that drive the

“wire walker”. For the eloquence, the epic, the lighthouse-less truth of the lived poetic act, the

project is carried high, into the sky.

The narrative threa

The stake, the link, the game, is found in a step. Walking. Forward. Standing.

The impossible quest could be expressed as follows:

To renew the dialogue with gravity in every step, to reinvest at every moment what it takes of body and spirit to hold, suspended, on the sharp blade.

Between heaven and earth, to remain sovereign, to be free, despite the chaos, despite the inherent instability of the situation, a metaphor for human existence.

Experience the chaos.

There's the game of gniaque, of high-flying struggle with the forces of gravity.

Embracing chaos.

The balancing artist's “weapons” are memorized: circular movements of the arms and legs, undulating movements of the spinal axis, upward and downward catching strategies. The aim is to become a maelstrom of stability: the whole body moves in synergy to serve a center of gravity that rests just above the wire.

Embodying chaos.

There's the excitement of letting go and relaxing. The reflex body united with the phenomenology of cause and effect. After the fight, the induced dance, a cosmic dance orchestrated by gravitational attraction. Before the end, he “lets loose” in a total game of improvisation, at the moment of the piece's main musical theme.

The text, in voice-over, chanted by Fanch, or spoken-sung by Vivianne, is a key for the spectator,

and gives the play its narrative arc. It evokes the

“entities” that, invisible or deified, give the play its meaning. Imbalance, chaos, gravity, earth, sky, personified. Scientific data, compact and true, leaves the field open to the mystery of creation, life, death and love.

The sky as scenography

We enjoy the evening skies, where the light changes over the 40-minute show. Clouds or airplane tracks expand and draw phantasmagorical figures. Weather, by its very nature, is chaotic and uncontrollable. It plays, and makes each performance unique.