Zimmermann & De Perrot give circus genre creative tap at @hollandfestival

Holland Festival

Circus, tricks, clownery, spectacle: it has been a party for centuries. But roughly the same party every time.

Zimmermann & De Perrot, originally clown and DJ respectively, found each other in the brilliant insight that circus could be turned into beautifully absurd modern theatre. Internationally, they achieved a lot of success. With 'Hans was Heiri', they are now in the Netherlands, where they are in an angle that is also very successful and creative here. Think, for instance, of Jakop Ahlbom and his multidisciplinary illusionist performances.

Clowning, acrobatics, stunts up to dizzying heights: 'Hans was Heiri' is full of them, just like traditional circus. But Zimmermann & De Perrot have given it a creative touch, adding dance and mime.

The figures that rise with sticks, rags and panels, extending and retracting their limbs or fluttering into the air, are more absurd than circus performers. To the spatial sounds of DJ De Perrot, they move like enigmatic ghosts. Just like in the circus, you think: 'How do they do that?'

Then comes the eye-catcher: the set, a huge rotating cube divided into four rooms with tables and chairs. As they rotate, fast, slow, left, right, the six performers play a breathtaking game of giving in to gravity or not, with the most beautiful moments being when they wobble, bounce along and stick to the wall or floor. Through doors, they visit their neighbours. They disappear into a niche only to fall or storm out, always unexpectedly. Everything is of unparalleled precision and timing.

On the floor in front of the cube, the scenes continue. Fitting and measuring with half or whole furniture, conflicts with awkwardly protruding slats, a snake woman, a man who just can't manage to sit down on a small table, dances, lifting, collisions: everything follows one another in a compelling flow.

It is very clever the way the group plays with patterns of expectation. Stunts, jokes and tricks you see coming have, before you know it, already taken an unexpected side path. If something is very difficult and clever, you think: "They won't even...". And yes, they will! A woman hangs by one arm from a corner of the spinning cube, as if it doesn't cause her the slightest discomfort. Chilling! How does she keep it up! And then a man comes along and grabs her hand and lets himself be lifted up like that. And the woman? She lets him dangle on her arm and looks as if she is standing in the bus with an empty shopping bag.

There are passages where the tension does slump a little. It is difficult to sustain the fast pace and the lightning-like sophistication uninterrupted. More resting points in the clownish bustle would remedy this.

The brochure says what Zimmermann & De Perrot want to get across: it's "about the human being who always wants to be different, but is essentially not so different from others. Not necessary! No one gets this message out. The characters are just very varied, likeable and colourful, individuals who remain close to the audience despite their strangeness. Let it be a performance without a message or story. That is its strength: that the audience is so delightfully and effortlessly drawn into a world where logic is superfluous.