ANIMAL

The Alfonse circus returns to us with an unusual animal proposal, offering a series of surreal and impressive fables of virtuosity and irresistible comedy! The company takes young and old to discover a reinvented terroir. With ANIMAL, the stable is in madness, the barn upside down!

A gentleman-farmer surrounds himself with familiar but crazy creatures: the hens have teeth, the ducks are very naughty and the cows kick in the stretchers! Alfonse practices the return to the earth with aplomb, applies a resolutely contemporary approach to secular values. The imagination flirts with the tales of our childhood, rurality turns out to be as energetic as it is poetic. Alfonse wildly twists clichés, happily diverts morality, seduces with lyricism and prowess. A mix of trad and soul, the musicians concoct an irresistible agricultural funk. Children, parents, grandfather, friends, the members of the troupe form a solid clan, a close-knit family in the city as well as in the countryside. ANIMAL is the farm in all its forms!

Cirque Alfonse is a young circus company from Saint-AlphonseRodriguez in the province of Quebec, established in 2005. Its founding members have all worked with some of the most renowned “nouveau cirque” companies around the world. This young company is comprised of a team of professional acrobats graduated from the École nationale de cirque de Montréal, as well as a professional dancer, an ex-skiing champion and three talented and versatile musicians. This brave and creative group of young performers is blazing a creative path that no one has yet dared to explore, blending the arts and techniques of the circus and infusing them with the most picturesque facets of traditional Quebec folklore.

The story starts in 2005 when the Cirque Alfonse project is created and first takes shape. In 2006, the company launches its first show La Brunante. The show is of short duration but it serves as a very successful first experience. It will later become the foundation for Timber! After La Brunante, the members of the company each pursue their own solo careers with Montreal’s Les 7 doigts de la main, the Cirque du Soleil, Cirkus Cirkör of Sweden, the Cirque Starlight of Switzerland and the Montreal dance company Bouge de là, before starting work in 2010 on their second creative project, a show called Timber! that they premiered at Montréal Complètement Cirque in July 2012. And in July 2014 BARBU: Electro-trad Cabaret also premiered at Montréal Complètement Cirque. This production has since been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe for one month, at London’s Wondergound at the Southbank Centre in London and toured twice to Australia, including engagements at the Perth Fringe and the Adelaide Fringe and a one-month, sold-out run at the Sydney Opera House. TABARNAK is the company’s fourth production and premiered in July 2017 at Montréal Complètement Cirque.