Definitely one to travel for, Pisteurs d'Etoiles is a large and dense and richly programmed nine-day festival entirely dedicated to contemporary circus. (Only in France.)
Among the 2011 programme, Cie My!Laïka show the full-length version of Popcorn Machine, which Sideshow saw as a twenty-minute extract at Jeunes Talents Cirque in 2010, and which there was an intriguing but messy piece using the exploded stage language of 90s-style devised theatre; Atelier théâtre enfants present La Nuit de Enfants Perdus, the story of little Alphonsine and his brothers, lost in a city at night as its fools, poets, merchants, villains and heroes begin to emerge; multi-skilled David Dimitri gives his autobiography in the one-man show L'Homme Cirque; Ockham's Razor represent the UK with their giant factory piece, The Mill; Théâtre d'un jour bring their sad and timeless portrait of an ill child, L'Enfant Qui...; and Cirque Mandingue storm in with boisterous, rough, energetic acrobatics and dance.
Alongside the ticketed programme there's a lot of free, outdoor work, including a number of interventions from the L'école Graine de Cirque and huge-scale puppetry and outdoor spectacle from Carros de Foc Teatre.