My first dream was to be a ballet dancer. I've happened to be a weightlifter. My grandfather taught my cousins and me how to throw knives at the garage door and crack the whip like Indiana Jones. Those were probably my first links with the circus. I had a talent for the written word, so first I went to study words in Hypokhâgne at the Lycée Pierre de Fermat, then at the Université Toulouse le Mirail, where I spent a few years looking for a way into the architecture of language. It was a fascinating subject to research, but when the question of commitment arose at that crucial moment when it determines the years to come, I realised that I was longing for other horizons and that it was imperative.
I chose another path and went towards theatre. In the Théâtre de la Digue in Toulouse (France) I met Claude Bardouil, an actor, dancer, director, choreographer from Toulouse. I didn’t realize it for years but now, as I look back on my artistic evolution, I see how marked it is by that encounter, like something that would have infused and grown as I gained experience.
My beginnings on stage were nevertheless painful. I was not firmly anchored. Words made me wobble. So, I went out to experience the world, find my own words. In parallel, I worked on my physical anchoring and trained my body, everyday, for 4 years. I kept myself ready. The day I came across a rope in a corner of the Lido, I was.
On that rope, I quickly realise that I have found the connection between the words I write and this other language I had never abandoned since university, the language without words. After I set foot in the training room of La Grainerie with my rope, I won’t come out for three years, learning, taming, weaving paths between the rope and my body until the two became inseparable. Doing and redoing until I no longer know how to do it. After having experimented with short forms on open stages and improvised aerial performances with musicians, I choose to come back to theater with the idea of confronting the boards to the ring.To cross the vertical space of my rope with the horizontal space of the stage.
The “inwordvement” of the body and words.
My work on OPSIS, my first aerial rope solo, originates from the crossroad of theatre and circus, from the stage of the Théâtre Jules Julien to that of La Grainerie where I show the early stages of my work.
In 2016 I left the Toulouse region for the Trégor and dropped anchor by the sea to welcome a child.
When I take to the skies again, it will be with a whole new meaning. To raise. In 2018, I crossed paths with the Compagnie L'Eventail at the Académie de danse Baroque de Sablé, and from one encounter to the next, I found my way back to the theatre at the Domaine de LInières in Julien Ostini's production of Andromaque, in which I played the role of Cleone.
Little by little, the call of words returned.
In 2022 I began work on Dédale - poème vertigineux, an adaptation for voice and corde lisse of Ariane's Lettre à Thésée, a form that I felt would find its fullness when performed on the foreshore. The following spring, the Fracage association was set up to take my projects to Brittany, a structure that would enable me to stage the show Dédale on the Locquémeau foreshore at low tide in September 2023.
The story between this rope and me is a bit like the story of my life. It's an invisible guide, through joy and turmoil, the place where life is free of vertigo and the fear of falling. The place where I feel I belong.Everyday I climb all the way up I close my eyes and stay motionless for a moment above the void, in the embrace of my rope. In that resonance. And I feel joy.
This is what I wish to convey, this intensity, this exact coïncidence of oneself with space, of oneself with the others. In-time-sity. It sometimes is a motion merely hinted at that unfolds the visualisation of all the possibles, it sometimes is simply halting in silence and breathing.Something might have happened.
Hélène BOU
Projets
TresseS : creation in progress (2024/25) - 33 min - electro acoustic circus /// Hélène BOU (aerial rope dancer and choregraph) and Philippe OLLIVIER (bandonion and Logelloop)
Dédale : creation in 2023 - on the road - 25 min - vertiginous poetry /// Hélène BOU (circus artist and voice)
Quinn : creation in 2016 - 30 min - aerial rope solo - aerial Nô circus /// Hélène BOU (circus artist)
Opsis : creation in 2015 in trade - 20 min - aerial rope solo /// Hélène BOU (circus artist) – Arthur SARTHOU (sound manager) – Xavier CONSTANS (voice actor)
SynOPSIS : creation in 2016-2017 - 60 min - AIR-tragedy /// Hélène BOU (circus artist) – Arthur SARTHOU (actor) – Xavier CONSTANS (actor)