Record attendance, broad spectrum and lots of enthusiasm

"The eighth ATOLL festival was undoubtedly the best so far," says Bernd Belschner, who is responsible for the event focused on contemporary circus with a small team. With more than 8,600 visitors, it was not only the best-attended ATOLL edition to date, but also certainly outstanding in terms of quality, depth and breadth. About 100 artists from more than a dozen countries had shown on ten days the wide range of what is currently possible in contemporary circus.

The crowd pullers this year came from Scandinavia. For example, Cirkus Cirkör, which likes to be called the "Swedish national circus", swept away a wide audience with its "Knitting Peace" at the opening with opulent stage machinery, astonishing artistry, folk-rocking live music and a flood of acrobatic images. The audience was no less enthusiastic about the Scandinavian tent production Circus I love you, in which three duos in the Ostauepark set off acrobatic fireworks, to which the artists, who were not busy elsewhere at the time, accompanied themselves musically as a band.

"With this year's ATOLL Festival, we have reached new circus spheres," said TOLLHAUS Managing Director Britta Velhagen, who is also active in the ATOLL team. She pointed out that not only artistically innovative productions were shown during the almost two weeks, but also

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)