Séquence 8
Opening Night: April 16, 2015
Closing: April 26, 2015
Theater: New York City Center
From the spellbinding nouveau cirque company behind Broadway’s “Pippin” comes “Séquence 8,” a show that explores human emotions so intense that they explode into highflying acrobatics. Starring eight fearless performers from the Montreal-based Les 7 Doigts de la Main (7 Fingers), the emotionally intimate “Séquence 8” redefines the meaning of the word “circus” through a unique fusion of acrobatics, hip-hop, humor, and propulsive music. Directed by two of the company’s seven artistic directors, Shana Carroll and Sébastien Soldevila, Séquence 8 premiered in Lyon, France in 2012, and has been met with rapturous acclaim in 15 countries worldwide. Perfect for families and grown-ups alike,the show makes its New York premiere in the wake of 7 Fingers triumphs such as Queen of the Night and Traces; the latter show was named one of Time magazine’s Top Ten Plays and Musicals of 2011.
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April 20, 2015
Among the abundant talents possessed by Les 7 Doigts de la Main — the philosophizing acrobats whose delightful new show “Séquence 8” runs through Sunday at City Center — is a gift for subverting metaphors. Many poetic comparisons will probably spring into your mind as you watch this sexy, witty Montreal-based team distort, upend and mock the laws of physics that keep us earthbound. But before you’ve come up with a fancy mot juste or two, the troupe will have blocked the trope. Those two guys who use what looks like a slender seesaw to catapult each other somersaulting into the heavens? Well, when they’ve finished this particular act, they start bickering pretentiously about whether what they’ve done is about life’s eternal quest for balance or a matter of listening to ghosts. As for that tall fellow who juggles boxes into fluid, eye-teasing towers, he announces — in a product-plugging, talk-show-style interview — that he’s written a book on the theory behind it all: “How To Live With the Boxes You’re Thinking Outside Of.” You can’t take any of what this company (which worked on the Broadway revival of “Pippin” and the cabaret circus “Queen of the Night”) says too seriously. Its special art defies not only gravity but also words. Any spoken explanations here have an ironic spin that plays with our desire to put these confoundingly agile young things into, uh, boxes.
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