Circus: Kintsugi circus machine

With Kintsugi, Machine de Cirque elevates acrobatic art: a poetic and human fresco where feats, emotions and fragilities are repaired in gold.

For over ten years, each new creation has been an opportunity for Machine de Cirque to reinvent itself, explore original dramatic structures, and imbue acrobatic movement with a deeper meaning. With Kintsugi, or the art of sublimating imperfections, directed by Olivier Lépine, the Quebec troupe once again steps outside its comfort zone and passionately plunges into a new decade.

All sorts of performance challenges await the artists, immersed in an unfamiliar world, traversed by profoundly human shared experiences: love, grief, and motherhood. These universal emotions inhabit them, animate them, and carry them through acrobatic tableaux, framed like a long cinematic tracking shot. This innovative piece, with its unique combination of disciplines—the moments of aerial suspension are breathtaking—and its deeply human message, transforms the eight circus artists into characters within a luminous metaphor: that of kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of repairing ceramic objects with gold powder. For despite their emotional wounds and life's scars, they must work together, unite to stand strong, soothe their wounds… simply to live! Beyond the spectacular, the piece transforms technical feats into poetic gestures, generating emotion and dreams.