• 19th-21st January 2021

    On standby

    Different locations

    ,

Le Pas Grand chose

  • Cirque Ici / Johann Le Guillerm

    France

    A playful attempt at pataphysics or a performed lecture

  • 1h20
    Ages 12 and up
© Elizabeth Carecchio
© Philippe Cibille
© Philippe Cibille
© Philippe Cibille
© Philippe Cibille
© Philippe Cibille
© Philippe Cibille
© Elizabeth Carecchio
© Elizabeth Carecchio
© Elizabeth Carecchio
© Elizabeth Carecchio

teaser

Presentation

"Seeing as I want to consider what the point of the world around me is by attempting a global diffraction, considering the idea of the point itself seems to be a reasonable and irreducibly modest ambition."

Le Pas Grand Chose [The Not Very Much] is a "pataphysical mental attempt" in which Johann Le Guillerm delivers a circus of the mind. Or, an explanation on how to recreate the world from the minimal point, how to affirm that the world can be redesigned so as not to suffer it but to experience it better, to think it, to live it.

A utopia? Perhaps, except that when Johann Le Guillerm enters into a debate with the point, the adventure takes extremely unexpected turns. Accepting to walk along the meandering pathways of this refractory brain will make us lose our most elementary points of reference. There is a permanent threat of imbalance and a constant whirlwind of ideas.

Because accepting a line of thought that is counter to the world is to abandon our a priori but perhaps also our a posteriori... The words of this profoundly talented artist become an event because his devotion to mutations is almost as famous as his object manipulation and performances nourished by boundless curiosity. That is to say, take his word for it in this inventive and jubilant conference that examines not very much!

With Johann Le Guillerm
Light design Anne Dutoya
Light technician Flora Hecquet
Video technician David Dubost
Sound design Alexandre Piques
Video design Christophe Rannou
Costumes Anaïs Abel
Manufacture and construction Sylvain Ohl
Decoration Alexandra Boucan

Production Cirque Ici
Coproduction 2 Pôles Cirque in Normandie – La Brèche in Cherbourg and Cirque-Théâtre d’Elbeuf / Agora national circus center for Boulazac / Archaos national circus center / Le Grand T theater for the Loire Atlantique / Le Monfort in Paris / Tandem national theater / Théâtre de l’Agora national theater for Evry and Essonne / Les Treize Arches theater in Brive / Le Volcan national theater in Le Havre / CREAC – La Cité Cirque in Bègles.

Johann Le Guillerm was welcomed in a writing residence at the Monastère de Saorge as part of the Monuments in Movement program of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux.

Residencies Théâtre de l’Agora national theater of Evry and Essonne / Le Channel national theater of Calais / Comédie de Caen / CDN de Normandie / 2 Pôles Cirque in Normandie – La Brèche in Cherbourg and Cirque-Théâtre d’Elbeuf.

With the support of the Departmental Council of Essonne.
The company is also supported by the Ministry of Culture (DGCA and DRAC agencies for Ile-de-France) / the Region Ile-de-France Region / the City of Paris / the Institut Français in Paris.

"It’s quirky, unusual, brilliant, absurd, completely unpredictable, but constructed with disarming logic."

– Le Figaro (Ariane Bavelier)

"Johann Le Guillerm studied acrobatics and also clowning. This hitherto unexplored burlesque dimension bursts out in Le Pas Grand Chose, which embraces a slapstick that would do Buster Keaton proud, calm and lunar, with a notion of balance as subtle as we have seen in his other performances such as Secret." 

– Le Monde (Fabienne Darge)

"Le Guillerm is a born object manipulator, he prefers large scopes and minuscule points. He builds a personal cosmogony of a strange charm and a neo-pataphysical sensibility, and one dives deliciously into the middle of it with all one’s neurons ablaze."

– Télérama (Emmanuel Bouchez) 

"A playful pataphysical endeavor, this piece is an introduction to the foundations of disobedient thinking ..."

– Politis (Anaïs Heluin)

"We know this circus-trained thinking animal for his tent shows, his installations, and his architextures. With Le Pas Grand Chose, Johann Le Guillerm now lets us discover another facet of his inventiveness by embodying an ignorant scientist who deploys a concept of attraction that is as logical as it is zany."

– Médiapart (Jean-Pierre Thibaudat)

Johann Le Guillerm is a member of the first graduating class of the CNAC national circus center. He has worked with the Archaos national circus center, participated in the creation of the Volière Dromesko, and co-founded the Cirque O. In 1994, he created his own company, Cirque Ici, and completed his first solo show, Où ça?

He won the Grand Prix National du Cirque in 1996 and the Prix des Arts du Cirque SACD in 2005.

In 2001, he became wholly absorbed by Attraction, a vast research project that questions balance, forms, viewpoints, and movement... Defining himself as a practitioner within the space of perspectives, he shatters the frontiers of traditional circus disciplines.

The Attraction project materializes itself in various forms: the notion of the center, moving sculptures, observation tools, freestanding sculptures, graphic poems, an observatory of flying objects, a show under a big top, a conference-show… this creative research laboratory takes on as many guises as there are construction sites and perspectives on the world. 

  • Tuesday 19 January 08:30pm
  • Thursday 21 January 08:30pm