Festival CiRCa – it’s all over now…

All good things come to an end….and this weekend, the thirtieth CiRCa Festival finished it’s 10 days of madness! 120 performances, 240 artists, probably in excess of 30,000 visitors – it was good.

One of my last performances were an English group called ‘Pirates of the Carabina’ with « Flown »

This was really very good – non-stop action, with a few slow bits (even so…) – the lamp in the picture above was hauled all over the place, with somebody hanging on for dear life!

The last performance I saw was my friends from the ‘Compagnie du Poivre Rose’ with « Mémoire(s) »

I have already photographed this troupe during their residence here in Auch only a month ago, and so it was interesting for me to see the ‘finished product’ as it were.

All in all I found the festival better than last year – by which I mean better photographically. This said, I am becoming increasingly frustrated in that with an audience it’s obviously impossible for me to be mobile and move around, so some angles are impossible to achieve.

There’s a noticeable difference between the tension perceived (from the artists) when they are performing in front of an audience or just two or three people during a dress rehearsal. This tension can really influence the quality of the images – in that the artists push themselves that extra little bit when there is an audience present, and this often manifests itself in the images.

I’m in two minds about continuing with my ‘coverage’ of the festival – I’m much more at ease when I have the liberty to move around while the artists are performing – and this shows in the images I produce. I’ve been doing this for 5 years now so I think I might have a pause next year – we’ll see.