The birth of Circus Baobab was due in part to filmmaker Laurent Chevallier, who had already made several films in the region. He wanted to make a film about circus in Guinea, and thus ended up creating one!
In association with Telivel Diallo, Guinea’s Director of Culture, and Pierrot Bidon, founder of Archaos and a leading light in the contemporary circus movement in France, he set about training the artists, acrobats and musicians who would eventually take Western audiences by storm.......
Directed by the legendary Archaos director Pierrot Bidon, this is an African extravaganza of uninhibited dancing, high risk acrobatics, amazing juggling and clowning to high energy traditional live West African music. With an extraordinary set of the Baobab Tree as the central feature of a show which literally explodes in a sensational finale which will light up all the open air amphitheatre of Hedeland.
Circus Baobab takes its power from the centuries-old traditions of Guinea, which give it a powerful and particular character. This ability to preserve its heritage, whilst gaining a foreign language, has generating a new writing style and a new aesthetic form.
The troupe is born from the Guinean National Center of Acrobatics and this will be their second visit in Denmark. A few years back they performed with the show "The Jumping Drums" (Les Tambours Sauteurs) . This time we will see the first and largest of their performances "The Legende of The Drummer Monkey" (La Légende du Singe Tambourinaire). The show is co-directed by Pierrot Bidon whom we have also seen several times in Denmark when he toured with the totally wild and amazing Circus Archaos in the early 90's.
The first show of Circus Baobab gets its inspiration from a guinean legend and relates the story of the men who stole the djembe from the drummer monkey." The Legend of the Drummer Monkey " illustrates the extraordinary energy of the guinean artists and their acrobatic potential, linked to dance and percussion. Their playful approach to the apprenticeship of circus techniques expresses perfectly the life and ingenuity of such an acquisition: "When you hear the call of the tom-tom, it starts to make you itch "