FLOODESIGN

With this impressive pedigree, Boitel might have been content to continue performing in Thiérrée's eye-popping productions or in the Spiegelworld spectacle Désir. Ben Brantley called Boitel's performance in Désir "truly ravishing," and reviews for Thiérrée's The Junebug Symphony praised her as an "alluring and graceful contortionist, acrobat, and trapeze artist." But Boitel's prodigious talent, ambition, and restless spirit led her instead to create her own work that blends theater, dance, music, and circus arts. This new frontier of artistry and expression reflects developments in contemporary circus. According to John Ellingsworth, editor of Sideshow Circus Magazine, "Circus is always on the borders of society. Now it's on the border of art forms. Something new has been born in an intermingled space where ideas are constantly tested against one another; it takes on elements of dance, martial arts, puppetry, extreme sports, tricking, mime, devised theatre, and countless other forms. But while the approaches are manifold, all the artists are trying to do is find what's deepest and most fundamental in their art and how best to express it." A Family Affair Growing up in Montauban in southwest France, young Raphaëlle went to the circus with her mother and older brother Camille, and it was love at first sight. She knew she wanted the circus life. The Boitels' remarkable mother, Lilou, taught her four children to believe they could achieve anything if they worked hard enough. They wanted to train with the great Annie Fratellini at her National Circus School in Paris but did not have money for tuition. Lilou decided the family would work its way north. They piled into a van and lived out of it for the summer. Camille was a juggler; Raphaëlle, a nine-year-old contortionist. They performed on the streets and town squares of seaside towns all along the way, earning their tuition and refining their circus skills Raphaëlle Boitel, Maya Masse, and Lilou Herin in the The Forgotten/L'Oublié(e) Still image from film. Today the circus has been turned inside out … seeking out new collaborators, new directions, yet holding to age-old ideas that were always there under the hot lights and fanfare of circuses past. —John Ellingsworth, Sideshow Magazine " " www.peakperfs.org 9

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