Compagnie XY: the search for what makes a community
More than a company, XY is a collective of around 20 acrobats constantly in search of what makes a community. Their creative processes, like the life of the company, are based on collective intelligence and teamwork. Requiring interdependence, balance and complementary forces, their discipline, acrobatics, is conducive to their explorations.
Möbius: acrobatics on the move, a metaphor for living
Compagnie XY, which had already proved its worth with Le Grand C and Il n'est pas encore Minuit, is now ready for its new creation with Rachid Ouramdane. Nineteen acrobats, all unique, will be on stage for this new work. They form human columns that constantly rise, become distorted or overturn each other. The continuously moving collective launches into lifts, acrobatic flights and wild races, coming together and breaking up in fractions of a second. All the gravity-defying acrobatics are risky, but each performer knows his or her differences, strengths and weaknesses. The collective intelligence to face sometimes extreme situations emerges from a multitude of singularities. Möbius questions the relationship to oneself, to others, to the group and the ability to live together in an extremely poetic vision.
Rachid Ouramdane’s skill with large ensembles pushes Compagnie XY’s dancers to combine their acrobatic performance with unexpected and emotional choreographic motifs. In this performance, their movements’ fluidity sometimes upstages the acrobatics’ physical difficulty and the need for precision.
Support for creation in new circus arts
If Compagnie XY defends such a special world, it is because their creation results from teamwork. The BNP Paribas Foundation and XY met in 2016. At the time, the company was working on its in situ creations called Les Voyages, a new kind of artistic intervention in the public space. Meeting the audience in urban or peri-urban settings allows the company to design the act of creation in a constantly renewed environment while creating a social link between inhabitants and the company.
Today, the BNP Paribas Foundation’s second cycle of support allows it to stand by Compagnie XY throughout the whole new Möbius adventure.