Cirque Eloize

On Sunday, we went to the Overture Center to see the Cirque Eloize show "Nebbia". It was a great show filled with comedy, drama, and lots of theatrical performances by the cast. Here's word from the director of the show (Nebbia means fog):

The fog that would float down when we visited my grandparents would swallow up the entire house. The neighborhood disappeared, followed by the entire village. Standing on the living room balcony, I would spy on the void and when the sky was very low, I would see strange things. The waves of the sea came to lick at the garden gate and hallucinations paraded along the row of poplar trees. I'd watch as lovers chased after one another. I'd see camels, elephants, soldiers returning from war… Once, I even saw myself float by. I was all grown up, driving a red car. It was often, or should I say always, a carnival...

The sound of the sea was omnipresent. And when the fog lifted, mullet and bass would be lying on the road. Once, we even found a fishing boat in the village square. An entire fishing boat. Yet the ocean was 300 kilometers from the grandparents' house.

There are other types of fog; fog that slips down over our eyes, drawing a thin veil between us and those who are already a little bit elsewhere. For some time, a fog has floated between my grandmother and me. I look a little blurred to her. Sometimes I'm my grandfather as a younger man or, in the flash of a second, just some stranger, some shadow. My grandmother has gone to the other side of the sky, which is very low. Occasionally, we see her, as the little girl I never knew, the young woman who turned grandfather's head, the old olive tree planted in the garden by an ancestor…

From my very early age, I've been fascinated by acrobatics. Fascinated by the movement that defies the laws of gravity, that combines strength and lightness, precision, synchronicity, confidence, surprise and risk. I like what goes unexpressed in theater, the veiled, the gesture that remains invisible.

When the sky is very low, we see things we don't normally see. We travel in a world of memories, invented images, what we call dreams for the sake of convenience. To tell my tale of a childhood that is re-invented each time, I use geometries and the lucidity of acrobatic theatre danced on stage by an extraordinary group of performers.

Daniele Finzi Pasca
Author & Director