From 5 November, Recirquel Company’s immersive theatre production Walk My World offers audiences a cinematic experience. In its six-thousand-square-metre mythical world, reminiscent of film sets, gods, heroes and strange creatures await spectators. The mythological story comes to life through the language of contemporary circus and dance.
The production brings to life the story of Virgil’s epic, the tragic love of Aeneas and Dido. A Roman mythological world has been created in, and to fit, the industrial space of Millenáris.
Artistic director Vági Bence, the writer, director and choreographer of the piece, revealed that after five years of preparation, construction and rehearsals began eight months ago. The performance is the work of almost 150 creatives. The hall contains forty installation spaces, filled with many carefully selected objects and small details that add to the lives and stories of the characters. The objects were selected from the period between the 1920s and the ’70s.
The piece’s 25 characters are played by 32 acrobat-dancer-actors, selected from 900 applicants. The artists, who come from four continents, are on stage throughout the 2-hour-30-minute show. The performance features 220 scenes, with some 22 hours of choreography created.
Blending contemporary circus with contemporary dance, the performance guides spectators into a dream world: if they follow a character, they reach places in the space they would not find on their own and see the story from that character’s perspective. The gigantic production even includes scenes that perhaps only one person will see, happening to them alone. As a result, every spectator leaves with a slightly different story.
Vági Bence encourages spectators to explore the space alone, since the spectator is the director, and it is worth everyone discovering the performance for themselves, following the multi-stranded story according to their own interests. The experience of invisible observation is heightened by the fact that spectators wear masks during the performance, allowing them to move more boldly among the sets.
They have created an immersive theatre production of a scale and concept previously seen only in the world’s leading arts centres, in London or New York. Forty furnished rooms await discovery in the performance space, including a battlefield with a fifteen-metre ceiling, a marketplace featuring twenty-five market carts and a stall converted from a military camper, a mystical labyrinth, shrines of the gods and homes of mortals, while a military bunker, a medic’s room, a chemistry lab, a perfume cart and a bar are also among the parts of the production. Spectators can freely enter the spaces and even touch the personal belongings of the gods Cupid, Juno or Mercury, which tell further stories.
Numerous custom-made props and set elements are also part of the production, including a robot several metres tall that interacts with the acrobats, and a bed and table that rise from the floor. More than twenty different circus disciplines can be seen in the performance, including several rare acts requiring special technical skill. The production features a Russian swing that sends acrobats flying ten metres high, contortion, solo and duo straps, rope, Chinese pole, ladder and juggling acts, as well as numerous disciplines built on custom-developed circus apparatus.
Walk My World can be seen five times a week as a permanent show in the Millenáris Nagycsarnok (Great Hall).
Source: MTI