Ideally, he would have liked “it does not become a story”. More like a hiccup that you let melt quietly behind you; at most an anecdote to make friends laugh or impress the girls. Corn ” that “, a haunting idea, ended up becoming the autobiographical material for an album, The dimension, then that of a show, The Dimension according to, which will be on view as part of the Les Singulier.es Festival, at the Centquatre, in Paris, from February 8 to 20.
“I was always tense when I got back on stage. I was rewatching the film: why did I fall? Why was I inattentive? » Tsirihaka Harrivel
It is precisely in this cultural place that, on October 4, 2017, in full performance of Big, came the accident that twisted the trajectory, personal and artistic, of Tsirihaka Harrivel. Son of a Malagasy computer scientist and a French teacher, this faithful “Tuesday evenings on France 3” devoted, in the 2000s, to the dissemination of traditional circus acts, from Bouglione to the Monte-Carlo circus, has become, through self-sacrifice and inventiveness, an acrobat of twirling poetry, prodigy of the Chinese pole . Composing a fusional duo with his partner (also his girlfriend at the time), Vimala Pons, met at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in 2005, he is a hit with Big, a performance show for two that is sold out.
She improvises an explosive striptease, carries a mannequin, piles of plates or, dressed as a nurse, a washing machine on her head. He, between two pieces on the keyboard, takes off from a trampoline and slides down, flexible as a skier, an 8-meter high vertical toboggan. “We first tried it at 3 meters. It sucked. The higher we climbed, the more we realized that the circus has to do with height and that it is this vertigo that absorbs everything”, recalls Tsirihaka Harrivel, in the studio that the two artists still share at Centquatre, equipped with instruments, a sofa and a printer that clicks into place as if by magic in the middle of the interview .
“Just super dented”
On October 4, 2017, when he was eight meters above the ground, a hook came off: the jeans that the circus man was clutching tore, leaving him no time to reach the famous slide for his steep descent. “I remember thinking to myself: ‘Hey, I’m in the wrong place…'” In a second, without a safety net, he collapses violently on an element of the decor, an Ikea gas cooker which sags under his weight.
You have 54.6% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.