Workshops at ATOLL Festival

September, 22. to 28.

Workshop with NIKOLAUS 
Circus Artist, author, director, Clown from France
For professionals and emerging artists, musicians, clowns, performers & dancers

• Participation fee: free, prerequisite is participation in two final performances
• Accomodation will be provided in private rooms
• Location: TOLLHAUS Karlsruhe, Alter Schlachthof 35
• Duration: five days and two performance days
• Maximum number of participants: 18, from 16 years
• Workshop language: English, German, French
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• Application to info@atoll-festival.de
  

If circus is an art, what is it that constitutes this circus art? What is specific to circus that cannot be said in any other way than with circus? The workshop with the Karlsruhe-based New Circus artist Nikolaus Holz and the director Karelle Prugnaud deals with this question.

At the center of the circus are two gestures, two movements: The salto “mortale” (the death leap), the trick and the kick in the butt (the laugh, the clown). For these two movements - the feat and its dissolution, the failure - there are two essential foundations: the body and childhood. It is important to get back to these. The very practical and tangible result of this joint research is an artistic tour of the Schlachthof site.

Karelle Prugnaud is considered one of the most exciting French directors and performance artists of our time. She began as a dancer and acrobat in street theater performances before staging numerous texts by Eugène Durif. Her quirky and provocative work gives birth to strong and memorable images.

Nikolaus Holz, born in Grötzingen in 1963, describes his life as stumbling from error to error. Today, Holz lives in Paris and, as a clown and artist, director and founder of the Compagnie Pré-O-Coupé, is one of the protagonists and pioneers of the New Circus movement.