Les 7 Doigts de la Main Circus at Zellerbach Hall Auditorium, February 11, 2017

Cal Performances presents Cuisine and Confessions featuring Les 7 Doigts de la Main Circus
Zellerbach Hall Auditorium
U.C. Berkeley, Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA 94305 USA
8:00 PM, Saturday, February 11, 2017

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

[7:46 PM; we find our seats; the pre-show entertainment is in full swing!]

• Clowning around and playing games with the crowd
• the set looks a lot like an Ikea kitchen
• Sidney tosses lemons into the the audience – playing catch – but squirts them with a water bottle if they drop the lemon or make a bad throw
• Pablo gives lessons (in the crowd) in one-handed egg-cracking
• nobody remembered to bring olives, drat!
• “Who is ready to sell their family for chocolate cake?”
• Pablo and Sidney engage in a raw egg toss across the audience

[8:08 PM lights down, house announcements from Mishannock: “remember that flash kills acrobats!”]

1. [8:10 PM] Opening sequence – “These are the Ingredients”
2. [8:14 PM] “The Perfect Omelette”
3. [8:18 PM] Juggling – Omelette Cumbia
4. [8:23 PM] Storytelling
5. [8:31 PM] Hoop-diving – “Leaving St. Louis”
6. [8:35 PM] Fruit is not a Dessert
7. [8:38 PM] Aerialsilks – Borscht; “The Departed”
8. [8:42 PM] “Dinner for One”
9. [8:44 PM] “Captain McCoy’s Ultimate Kitchen Set”
10. [8:52 PM] “For the Love of Round Tables”
11. [8:55 PM] Diabolo – Banana Bread – “Saved by Circus”
12. [8:57 PM] Timers
13. [9:00 PM] Acro-dance – “One Woman’s Life Recipe”
14. [9:05 PM] Hand-to-hand – Pelmeni – “3:00 in the Morning”
15. [9:10 PM] Acro-dance, group – “You’re the One That I Want”
16. [9:21 PM] Chinese Pole – Sunday Pasta – “Song for my Father”
17. [9:29 PM] Icarian games – “The Last Supper”
18. [9:32 PM] Contortion
19. [9:36 PM] Flour, “Chop Chop Miam Miam”
    [show ends 9:40 PM; bows and applause, then feeding the audience]

Les 7 Doigts de la Main Circus

• Sidney Iking Bateman: hoop-diving, diabolo, Icarian flyer, floor acrobatics;
• Heloise Bourgeois: banquine flyer, Chinese pole, Icarian flyer;
• Melvin Diggs: hoop-diving, banquine porter, Icarian porter, floor acrobatics;
• Mishannock Ferrero: hand-to-hand porter, Icarian porter, banquine porter;
• Anna Kachalova: hand-to-hand flyer,Icarian flyer, banquine flyer;
• Anna Kichtchenko: aerial silk, contortion, Icarian flyer, accordion;
• Gabriella Parigi: acro-dance;
• Matias Plaul: Chinese pole, Icarian flyer, banquine porter, guitar, harmonica;
• Pablo Pramparo: juggling, banquine porter, Icarian porter, acrodance, guitar.

• Shana Carroll: co-choreographer, co-director, co-writer;
• Sébastien Soldevila: co-choreographer, co-director, co-writer;

It's always fun to watch a circus – where else can you see such a range of expression of physical cleverness? Tonight's show might have been a bit long on story-telling and short on slap-stick, but variety is good! I don't think I'd previous attended any other show where the performers cooked food for the crowd during the show, then invited them to eat afterwards. Yum! Banana bread!

I think my favorite act this time around was the hoop-diving. Melvin and Sidney had amazingly good timing and great physical skills. Matias' Chinese Pole routine was also stunningly good, though enveloping it in the telling of his sad backstory was a bit of a distraction to me. Hard to say how I would have changed things; I guess my thought is that the story of his dad's disappearance was just a bit too sad to be part of a show of circus entertainment. Ting managed to take some pictures without killing any acrobats; I've scattered a few of my favorites here and there across the page.

Program Notes

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!