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The French companies on Hat Fair this year: dancing with diggers, wheelchairs, baguettes...

Monday 25 July 2011 , by Mathilde Vautier , Vincent Le Goascoz (Translation  Mathilde Vautier, Vincent Le Goascoz)

All the versions of this article: [English] [français]

For its 37th edition, Hat Fair was host to three French companies as part of ZEPA: Beau Geste, Les Apostrophés and Charli Encor.

Beau Geste, with Transport Exceptionnel transformed the Winchester Great Hall into a child’s dream, a dream where a man can dance with a JCB digger. A moment of mechanic poetry for the first festival night, in a magical historical and archeological setting. The audience is taken aback, wondering ’This? Here?’, but admires the ’exceptional choregraphy’ by Dominique Boivin

Following the accordion music of ’Passage Désemboîté’, the five performers from Les Apostrophés juggled with the audience and with absurd situations, throwing, passing, swinging with baguettes, baskets, boxes, brooms, hats, coffee cups and others funny items in the streets of Winchester.

And the festival ended with a French company Sunday 3rd July: Charli Encor with ’Ballet de chaises’ brought a smile or a laugh to the faces of the festival goers, for the company’s first show over the Channel. The artists in wheelchairs alternated dance, drumming, violin, anecdotes and paintball in the Oram’s Harbour Park. Not easy to dance on the grass when you are in a wheelchair...but the artists once again showed their determination, their passion for the stage and the audience and their happiness of performing the show in the country of their British neighbours.

Photos : Vincent Le Goascoz, Mathilde Vautier

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