For the past two years, Brussels-based Rosa Matthis has been installing her seesaw in public space in her quest to create a precarious tightrope, in a show which has become the first component in the trilogy, About Balance. Belgian company Cirque Barbette is presenting their first creation at the festival in the form of a compact performance installation for public space, based on a play on structures (involving wooden planks, ropes and tubes) that carefully create and share a sense of weightlessness. A dialogue develops between two circus artists and three musicians around the seesaw. The audience then become the counterweight and tightrope walkers during this quiet and peaceful interlude. I Feel the Earth Move becomes a splendid and chilled out ode to small movements and simple gestures.

Rosa Matthis is a circus artist, specialised in tightrope walking. In 2010, she founded her own company in Brussels, Cirque Barbette, a creative venue and small urban troupe which have already developed three touring performances: Ici (2010), Wasteland (2011) and CQFD (2015). In 2016, she began work on a new long-term circus creation in the form of a trilogy (About Balance). The first component, I Feel the Earth Move (of course, the air is full of it), was born from a stage in her work blending balance and “cool attitude”, public space and compact designs, collective construction and music.

Wooden planks, ropes and tubes are placed on the ground in a public square. This heap becomes a structure and then a seesaw is added with two circus performers standing face-to-face, maintaining balance to avoid touching the ground. The enchanting sounds of three musicians accompany the performance, which is gradually joined by members of the audience, who provide a counterweight and compensate movements as they join in the physical dialogue to become an artist and tightrope walker in their own right. As Rosa Matthis sums up nicely, “there is no frenzy, competition or examination”.

This is a collective and participatory game, a chilled out, sensitive sensory journey, a soft and fun circus that celebrates simple movements and the small things in life.