Once again the Plumes, who celebrated their twentieth birthday with the creation of Plic Ploc in 2004, set out on the road to happiness - that was the title of their first show. And us with it, as always with this troupe born in Besançon, which has renewed the circus tradition with its aerial and fanciful universe, delicately zany, all in visual and sound poetry. After having flown a lot, this time the Plumes get wet: Plic Ploc offers water games in all possible shapes and colors, on the stage where the lights, white and black play the effects of transparency and opacity. Back in Lyon after multiple tours to the four corners of the world, Cirque Plume comes back to us with this funny, spectacular, delicious, dazzling, lyrical epic ... Plic Ploc, it is magic, emotion and poetry in what it has more universal.

Source: Programme de la Maison de la Danse

 Co-founder of Cirque Plume, created in 1984 in Franche-Comté with a group of which he is part, made up of artists, musicians, acrobats, some being students, all in love with the bush paths. The troupe will meet its first great success seven years later. He was a clown and a juggler, and wrote and directed all the Cirque Plume shows. Director of the company, he is also its artistic director. In June 2017, the team announced that Cirque Plume will be shutting down in 2020.  

Author, filmmaker and video artist Charles Picq (1952-2012) entered working life in the 70s through theatre and photography. A- fter resuming his studies (Maîtrise de Linguistique - Lyon ii, Maîtrise des sciences et Techniques de la Communication - grenoble iii), he then focused on video, first in the field of fine arts at the espace Lyonnais d'art Contemporain (ELAC) and with the group « Frigo », and then in dance.
   On creation of the Maison de la Danse in Lyon in 1980, he was asked to undertake a video documentation project that he has continued ever since. During the ‘80s, a decade marked in France by the explosion of contemporary dance and the development of video, he met numerous artists such as andy Degroat, Dominique Bagouet, Carolyn Carlson, régine Chopinot, susanne Linke, Joëlle Bouvier and regis Obadia, Michel Kelemenis. He worked in the creative field with installations and on-stage video, as well as in television with recorded shows, entertainment and documentaries.

His work with Dominique Bagouet (80-90) was a unique encounter. He documents his creativity, assisting with Le Crawl de Lucien and co-directing with his films Tant Mieux, Tant Mieux and 10 anges. in the 90s he became director of video development for the Maison de la Danse and worked, with the support of guy Darmet and his team, in the growing space of theatre video through several initiatives:
       - He founded a video library of dance films with free public access. This was a first for France. Continuing the video documentation of theatre performances, he organised their management and storage.
       - He promoted the creation of a video-bar and projection room, both dedicated to welcoming school pupils.
       - He started «présentations de saisons» in pictures.
       - He oversaw the DVD publication of Le tour du monde en 80 danses, a pocket video library produced by the Maison de la Danse for the educational sector.

       - He launched the series “scènes d'écran” for television and online. He undertook the video library's digital conversion and created Numeridanse.

His main documentaries are: enchaînement, Planète Bagouet, Montpellier le saut de l'ange, Carolyn Carlson, a woman of many faces, grand ecart, Mama africa, C'est pas facile, Lyon, le pas de deux d'une ville, Le Défilé, Un rêve de cirque.

He has also produced theatre films: Song, Vu d'ici (Carolyn Carlson), Tant Mieux, Tant Mieux, 10 anges, Necesito and So schnell, (Dominique Bagouet), Im bade wannen, Flut and Wandelung (Susanne Linke), Le Cabaret Latin (Karine Saporta), La danse du temps (Régine Chopinot), Nuit Blanche (Abou Lagraa), Le Témoin (Claude Brumachon), Corps est graphique (Käfig), Seule et WMD (Françoise et Dominique Dupuy), La Veillée des abysses (James Thiérrée), Agwa (Mourad Merzouki), Fuenteovejuna (Antonio Gades), Blue Lady revistied (Carolyn Carlson).

Source: Maison de la Danse de Lyon

 A circus show is a live show.
A Cirque Plume show is made by the living for the living;
It’s joyful, colourful, profound, poetic, messy, rough and ready, and precise. It’s like life.
It is nourished by the exchange that takes place between ... a lively  bunch of people on the stage, launching into the air on ropes, doing  somersaults on bikes, blowing on light beams, inventive in music,  balancing on feathers ... and another bunch sitting in the audience,  lively people too, launched on the wings of their hearts, breathtakingly  together, inventing images, balancing on a frail poem which has sprung  forth from time immemorial ever since primates endowed with articulated  thumbs got together in a circle to sing, play, dance, and tell stories,  showing their amazement at the gift of life while attempting to gain  just a glimmering of insight into this mystery.
Our speciality is frailty, exchange, and this age-old yearning, this nostalgia for the ideal as Andrei Tarkovski put it.
The Circus is poetry in action. A poem to be shared.  

Source: Cirque Plume

More information: www.cirqueplume.com