• Photo: Company XY

  • Photo: Company XY

  • Photo: Company XY

  • Photo: Company XY

  • Photo: Company XY

Le Grand C

Experience this quintessentially French circus spectacle as seventeen nimble young performers create a 360 degree alternative universe of acrobatics, dance, music and human pyramids.

Le Grand C  a mass of finely honed, agile bodies, they surge, they merge, and they whip up a physical frenzy to form a breathtaking journey through the air and on the ground. Through sharp observation and original interpretation, they lay bare the rituals of any day anywhere in the world – from a city skyline, to a rugby scrum, to an elegant pirouette in flight. Company XY have created a humorous show with an edge, for an audience of all ages who like a spectacle with risk and daring.

Press

  • '... young acrobats who execute feats of incredible strength and agility with such charm and humanity that I left in a state of rapturous admiration.'

    Donald Hutera, The Times

  • 'This is a show that makes you want to walk taller, like the performers themselves, and reach up for the sky.'

    Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

  • '... the atmosphere created [was] almost haunting'

    The Londonist

  • 'A work of beauty and great skill.'

    Sideshow

  • 'Le Grand C is memorable not just for its myriad stacks, courage and heart-stopping movement, but also for the feeling that you only live through the people who support you, balanced precariously.'

    Total Theatre

  • 'There are many memorable things... the girl in a long, horizontal swallow-dive that stops a metre from the floor; the pair flying vertically, cleaved together, chest to chest; the simplicity of a folksong, sung with all its verses; and best of all, the pronounced sense of community and trust – probably more efficient than any safety net.'

    The Independent

  • Co-Producers

    Le Grand C  toured the UK in May 2010 to Great Yarmouth Hippodrome, London’s Roundhouse and Lighthouse Poole.

    Co-produced by: le Cirque théâtre d’Elbeuf (centre des arts du cirque de Haute-Normandie), La brèche (Centre des arts du cirque de Basse-Normandie), La Verrerie (Pôle National des arts du Cirque languedoc-Roussillon), La Comédie de Béthune, Circuits- Scène conventionnée Auch, Maison de la culture de Tournai, Ecole de cirque de Lomme.
    The Grand C  has been supported by the Ministère de la Culture (DMDTS, DRAC Nord-Pas-de-Calais), Le Conseil Régional Nord-Pas-de-Calais, l’Adami.

    Le Grand C  visited Lighthouse, Poole as part of Carte Blanche, a new season highlighting a wide range of contemporary circus creation and outdoor work, bringing artists from France, Finland and the UK.