Trampoville Project: Art, Sport and the City - An Article by Damien Drouin

The quest for height

My journey began in competitive trampolining, discovering aerobatics at the age of twelve. However, the sport’s competitiveness soon pushed me to seek the pure joy of acrobatics and original movements outside the competition. This quest brought me to contemporary circus, where a non-competitive, freer approach resonated with me. Attending circus school was not what I envisioned. Isolated with my trampoline and routine, my disillusionment grew, leading to two herniated discs that forced me to stop trampolining. Fortunately, I shifted to wire balancing, particularly tightrope walking, which rekindled my need for height. As I didn’t have enough carpet to secure my eventual fall, I put the trampoline that was gathering dust in a corner of the tent under the cable. The surprising ease of returning to balance after falls introduced a unique suspension space. Falling became a pleasure, oscillating between the wire and the trampoline, giving new meaning to vertigo. The meaning I’d always been looking for was there: the balance between aerobatics and suspension. I could overcome the tightrope walker’s fear of falling and develop a new bond with the audience.

Stepping outside the box

The trampoline quickly became too small for me to go all the way. After 6 months of research and experimentation, the Acronet was born. The Acronet is a huge 80 m2 frameless suspended canvas. Conceived from a fishing net that I reworked and reinforced, this dynamic canvas has become an endless source of inspiration for me. Sleek, silent and powerful, it transforms according to the lighting, becoming opaque or transparent. Because of its tension, the Acronet produces a very particular bouncing effect, with profound inertia and very complex reactions, given the numerous hooks and the amplification of each gesture. Driven by the idea that the fall, the aerobatics and the suspension of the tightrope walker merge in a happy synthesis, going from surface to line, from line to flat, without ever being completely satisfied with one without the other.

When you graduate from an art school, you’re usually destined to be a performer, but a number of powerful encounters made me realise that I needed to develop a world of my own. So in 2011, I set up the company Hors Surface with the help of author and composer Fabrice Bouillon-LaForest, and my parents. And in the space of just two years, we created two circus pieces. Boat - Transe Poétique, a creation for the public space, inspired by Rimbaud’s poem Le Bateau Ivre. And TETRAKTYS - Un conte slam acrobatique, an indoor show combining slam, dance, theatre and, of course, contemporary circus. In 2021, after several creations featuring the symbol of this ineffable and changing link between the world and its idea, between reality and its dream projection. I’ve started to imagine a project called Trampoville - a bridge between sport and art: inviting contemporary circus artists, performers and competitors of all ages to share a passion for aerobatics, with sport and art as the driving forces behind this encounter. We felt the need to get out of the theatre and into the city, to create in a place that people pass through, in a place that is conducive to unexpected encounters, in a place that brings different people together. This setting created a desire to share the creative process around Icarus’ dream with passers-by. Trampoville aims to create a poetic city within the everyday city. We very quickly felt the need to include the audience in this adventure. And not just as spectators, we wanted them to physically feel these sensations, for their bodies to be seized by the pleasure of the fall and the exhilaration of acrobatics. We’ve set up an aerialist’s workshop and a series of exchanges enriched by various artistic offerings, scattered around the city: completed shows, but also working stages and open rehearsals. Trampoline acrobatics is always at the heart of these performances, but the universes and styles range from burlesque to contemporary, from solo to collective, with more than 15 artists on stage, represented by young acrobats as well as former top-level competitors aged between 50 and 60. So, we’ve created the most multifaceted itinerary possible, with a single common element that gives it coherence and meaning: the trampoline. This element is approached from several points of view, several approaches.

The show and afterwards

Imagining a journey for the audience marked by sharing and transmission has led us to re-examine the logic of production and distribution by breaking the distance with the audience. The audience takes part in and is an accomplice to the stages of work, research and rehearsals. In this show, prowess is a mask, it seems natural in this body drifting in the sky and the wind. Our 15-days long residency at the Moulin Fondu 1 helped to finalise the writing of the finale of Trampoville, presented first in Cergy and then in Villiers-le-Bel, France. These are so-called priority neighbourhoods, where artistic projects have very little day-to-day presence, hence the idea of reversing the logic and having us go out and meet the public. A bit like the traditional circus, which went to towns that didn’t necessarily have a theatre. During FRESH 2023 we organised a ‘mini-session’ of Trampoville for participants invited by Le Moulin Fondu, on the 20th of September 2023. They were able to see one of the rehearsals for Envol before the premiere of this show, as well as the show Home. Home is the first solo I’ve written and performed for over 10 years. It’s the adventure of a tightrope walker who frees himself from the fall. It’s an invitation to lose yourself, for a moment, in a bouncing world of sensations and emotions. I really enjoyed being able to share with the FRESH 2023 participants my research into this project, which is very ambitious for our company, since we work with a large team and an imposing set. This approach defies the production logic of today’s shows, which favours sobriety in the project, with fewer performers and fewer technical constraints. Our creation time here is very short compared to the scale of the tasks required to put such a project together. I believe that the strength of Trampoville also lies in our ability to come together to overcome difficulties. For me, there is a clear parallel between creation and performance. We need others. It is thanks to this team that this ambitious project could come to life, and I am not just talking about the artists, but also the technical and production teams who all worked in the same direction. Every person is important and necessary in a company and in a creation. Multi-generational encounters, body performances, and transcending individuality to showcase diverse bodies in a shared moment of freedom are central themes that nourish my work.

1 Since 2010, Le Moulin Fondu has been labelled “National Center for Street Arts and Public Space” (CNAREP) by the French Ministry of Culture. Le Moulin Fondu operates in the field of outdoor arts and, among many other missions, supports the creation and distribution of shows. Its field of intervention is at the regional, national, and international levels, in collaboration with numerous partners and artistic teams.