Diabolo
A spool that is spun, thrown and caught on a string attached to two sticks. Only slightly less nerdy than kendama, diabolo is a complex and involved discipline that perhaps has lagged a little behind the artistic development of the other juggling and manipulation skills. Nonetheless, there's a Swiss company, Tr'espace, who specialise in diabolo and have made a full-length contemporary circus show, Le Cercle, that springs from the art.
Magazine
I think I've watched enough physical/visual work now that the concepts of narrative and character have become fully detachable from my understanding of theatre. But, still, you put something else in place: rhythm or formal patterning or just an element of raw, pulsing narrativity that can come from the drama of technical material or the intrinsic communicative power of a moving body.
Originally made in just five days and performed for four nights to an audience of friends in the tiny stables of Switzerland's Circus Monti, InStallation has since moved into a tent and toured some of Switzerland and France's largest festivals. Following a UK performance at Milton Keynes' IF Festival, one of the creators, Roman Müller, talks to Sideshow about staying faithful to the intimacy and roughness of those first performances.
One memory of InStallation is a chain of enduring images, seen through washes of blue and white light. A Chinese pole swings as a pendulum, casting a crisp shadow.