Festival Hautes Tensions

With circus arts, hip hop and a parkour contest, La Villette becomes a stage for bodies in movement. In tension. High voltage.

Circus arts and hip hop recently invaded Paris’ largest cultural park, La Villette, for the third edition of Festival Hautes Tensions ["High Voltage"]. The park, designed by Bernard Tschumi in 1979, hosted an event that explores the body, its limits and the desire and need to overcome them, pushing the envelope of exercise beyond physics. Challenge. Virtuosity. Moving beyond. Ultra. Hautes Tensions is all of this and more. The closing event confirmed and reinforced the festival’s calling: last 28 April, the Xtreme Gravity event became a meeting place (rather than a challenge) for the best traceurs in France.

Traceurs, from the French verb tracer that means literally to mark or draw, are vectors of diversion — if not subversion — of the urban space. With only the body as a means of expression, the traceur marks and (re-)draws the city. The Grande Halle de la Villette was thus, for one day, transformed into a real obstacle course of beams, scaffolding, wrecked cars and containers. Xtreme Gravity is the brainchild of RStyle (an association dedicated to the development of urban culture) and Malik Diouf (co-founder of the art of movement and the Yamakasi), and it is the first championship in France dedicated to Yamakasi, a practice better known as "parkour" or "free running." Yamakasi — made famous in the 2001 film by Luc Besson bearing the same name — represents the art du deplacement: the art of movement. The discipline was founded in France in the 1980s by a group of nine young people who identified themselves as The Yamakasi. The word yamakasi comes from the Bantu language, Lingala, spoken in Congo. Ya makási means "strong body," "strong spirit," "strong person."

Pushing the envelope of exercise beyond physics. Hautes Tensions is this and more

Once widespread in the Parisian banlieues, today parkour has official status; last 28 April, everyone could attend the freestyle evolutions of these street acrobats who occupy urban architecture by climbing on façades, jumping from railings to parapets, or dancing with steel and asphalt.

Meanwhile, for two weeks, the La Villette park became a platform for emerging forms of circus arts and hip hop, showcasing 17 companies and a multitude of approaches. The poetry and dream-like quality of the circus were presented by Pré-O-Coupe in their production — with Nikolaus — TOUT EST BIEN!. Acrobatics, song, balance, trapeze and clowns were brought together for a contemporary version of a Barnum freak show. Magic was represented by La Phalène, who explores how to divert attention and control the perception of reality.

Elettro-organic music accompanied an original variation on the art of juggling by Les Objets Volants with siteswap, a piece about defining partitions based on sequences of numbers that describe the particular rhythm of every toss allowing the creation of new figures.

To sublimate the concept of the meeting and intersection of different disciplines, the 2013 Festival Hautes Tensions inaugurated “shared scenes,” an original format in which different companies give 10 to 15-minute performances — all on the same evening. Kosh brought rhythm to the event with his mocking and sassy beatbox while four companies alternate on stage in their celebration of the joy of the body. Madrootz is a young collective that brings together some of the pioneers of the French Krump movement. This dance form — born in the LA suburbs in the 1990s and made famous in David Lachapelle’s film Rize — is rarely seen on stage; angry and tribal-inspired, it flirts with the martial arts. R.A.F. Crew, 2009 world champion in Las Vegas, brought their short version of the 2010 RAF City'z to the Théâtre National de Chaillot.

And finally, there was a face-off between six women from Zamounda Crew and six men from La Meute. The stylish female breakdancers fight, dance and wrangle against sexist prejudices. The men defend the herd ("meute") against the individual, flying all together or doing nothing at all. A tribute is paid to dance, especially its urban forms — hip hop, breakdance, capoeira, contemporary and even classical. New style, krump, popping, locking, house, waacking.

Acrobatics, song, balance, trapeze and clowns are brought together for a contemporary version of a Barnum freak show

Multiple influences range from African dance to martial arts, to combat, to salsa, to jazz rock. For ten days, the La Villette park became an even livelier place than normal: a field of action for performing bodies in motion. In tension. High voltage.

From 16 to 28 April 2013
Festival Hautes Tensions
Parc de La Villette, Paris

Festival Hautes Tensions

With circus arts, hip hop and a parkour contest, La Villette becomes a stage for bodies in movement. In tension. High voltage.

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