Drops from Heaven

Get ready to meet the angels. After having performed at the London Olympics in 2012,30 angels will be seen flying in the sky during the closing ceremony of the Bonjour India festival this Sunday at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. The French troupe Les Studios de Cirque present Flying Angels who will take over the city’s landscape and shower its spectators with fluffy feathers. It will bring to life an ancient legend where every 500 years,angels descend on the earth to meet people and experience the pleasures of the world.

A steel spider dome has already been erected at the venue. Almost resembling an arched staircase from heaven,it is through this that one will see the angels suspended from ropes and cables. Defying gravity,they will swing,fly and engage with the audience with the charm of trapeze artistes. “It is like a circus but without the tent and the animals. The stage will be occupied by the audience for a 360-degree view,” says director Stéphane Girard.

Directed by Girard and the late Pierrot Bidon (promoter of the contemporary circus),the hour-long show will use one tonne of processed and cleared white goose feathers for a scene where the angels lose their feathers. “The angels will come over to the audience and greet each one by gifting them a feather. Similar to a man giving a flower to a woman,the feathers are gifts the angels will give the audience,” says Girard.

In the ’80s,Bidon brought a new circus movement in Europe by changing the spirit of circus. “He came up with the idea of a circus without animals,” says Girard.

Girard hopes Delhi will remember the trapeze artistes,jugglers and dancers long after they celebrated Holi; it will be the French interpretation of the festival,he says. They will splash the colour white — which represents peace — on the audience through the feathers.

The show at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium will begin at 7.15 pm on Sunday. Contact: 43500222