Leuven in Scène: Magic fire installations, Don Q and La fille d'Hestia at Keizersberg

The Leuven in Scène weekend is booked long beforehand . I sure don't want to miss the 2-yearly weekend where Leuven is tranformed in a huge street theatre festival. 

The program is quite a challeng for choice making this year as the previous edition was so succesfull the crowd-handling had become a bit of an issue. So now multiple closing acts were scheduled at the same moment at quite disperse locations in the city.   For the first evening we chose the furthest destination to our home:  the park around the impressive abbey at Keizersberg.


After the climb uphill we were welcomed at the park entrance where little lights were distributed so that the people in front of us were spreading through the darkness in the park with a line of little lights. Big nice lighted up installations guided us to the first performance brought by Jonna Theatre from Leuven. It took a while before we had found a spot with some view on the performance (Note to the organisation: you reallly need someone directing the crowd to sit down as you did in 2010!).






The idea to bring an own interpretation of Don Quichote is quite ambitious and they had cool & orginal ideas. Yet the choreography could professionalise further when performing on a festival with lots of international acts.

Don Q - Jonna

Don Q - Jonna

Don Q - Jonna

Don Q - Jonna

After their end, there was lots of confusion where the next promised top act would be.  Lots of people left, forming long lines through out the park going in all directions while others quickly moved forward thinking they had conquered a very good spot for the next performance.   We were in doubt, started wandering along the fire installations of the park and heard lots of people asking where they had to go....Nobody knew.  Crappy organisation. We returned to the first stage, heard confirmation that Jonna would only clean up and were wandering again.  Due to all confusion we did not truly enjoy the magical fire installations we passed.   In the end we did arrive with many others at a dark (!!) field were a big circle had formed.  Ha found it, just in time for the start.

Fille d'Hestia by La Salamandre started very slowly in the dark where someone was trying to make fire during 10 minutes.  Ugh, could they  not skip that part, not quite that interesting to watch in the dark.
Fortunately fire came as well as a slow but poetic performance of a young women getting initiated to the mysteries of life.



Fille d'Hestia - La Salamandre (FR)

Fille d'Hestia - La Salamandre (FR)

Fille d'Hestia - La Salamandre (FR)

Fille d'Hestia - La Salamandre (FR)

Fille d'Hestia - La Salamandre (FR)

Comments

Brian Miller said…
ugh sorry for the crappy organization ....sucks for those tht left...the fire acts are really cool though, the spinners esp...seen one up close a while back and it was just amazing...

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