Tender

An empty space, 3 performers and sticks.

Balance, or the search for balance, is one of the main focuses of circus work.
From a biological point of view, there is no such thing as balance. An inert body can’t stand upright.
In reality, balance is an active process, a struggle against falling.
Balance is the search for stability and harmony.
It’s a quest for a moment that could be described as grace, so difficult is it to “hold”.
Not only physically, but also psychologically, economically and ecologically.
Seeking balance means accepting imbalance, error and incompleteness.
The same applies to social groups.
And our acute awareness of this need for balance has been forced upon us by the current crises.

From this very concrete search for balance, with large sticks as our only object/aggress, we hope this new creation will evoke other balances essential to life on earth: Western, industrial civilizations have initiated a mass extinction of living things.

We are forced to give up the idea of dominating the Other, the living, in order to exist.
We must accept our interdependence with the living world in a space that is not infinite.
This metaphysical quest for a balance that doesn’t exist was already at work in L’Homme de Boue, the company’s first creation.

Looking for the vertical, as a link between earth and sky, what arrangements are possible for human beings to surpass themselves in order to grow, to stand upright without crushing the world around them and of which they are a part?
Tending towards, pushing this tension to its maximum, not to destroy but to feel, to show tenderness towards oneself and others.

Tender, that’s all.

The Garden of Delights

Le Jardin des Délices is a circus company founded by Nathan Israël and Luna Rousseau, two authors, one on stage and the other directing.

With a predilection for materials, their creations question our relationship to the world and to otherness, to the physical and symbolic limits of our condition.

L’Homme de Boue, premiered in 2014 at Les Subsistances in Lyon, is the company’s first play and has performed in France and internationally. Nathan Israël received the SACD prize for juggling creation for this solo in clay.

In 2016, Héros Fracas was created, a show on the theme of heroes commissioned by Les Subsistances in parallel with a circus project with school classes and a middle school class.

In 2017, the Atelier du Plateau in Paris invited the company for the first edition of its FERIA festival: a site-specific show, Corps et Crues, was created for the occasion.

March 2018 saw the creation of Gadoue, a second show using clay, at the UP! festival. in Brussels. Since 2020, Gadoue has been a duo with harpist Delphine Benhamou, alternating with Paola Aviles.

2019 sees the creation of La Chose, a piece for five performers, winner of the Processus Cirque SACD and the Beaumarchais writing grant, at the Théâtre d’Arles for the Biennale des arts du cirque in Marseille.

Nathan Israël and Luna Rousseau have also directed shows for professional circus schools: Chair Fraîche, an ENACR graduation show in Rosny in 2012, and Vivace! a Christmas show with third-year apprentices from the Académie Fratellini in 2021.