Petit Mal Launches Circus Season at the Lighthouse

Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for Arts kicks-off its Carte Blanche circus season on 8 June with the extraordinary and wild Petit Mal, presented by the Race Horse Company from Finland.

Petit Mal emerges from the Finnish underground with a physicality that knocks the grace out of circus with a darkly humorous visual wreck of impossible circus theatre. On a stage littered with garage debris, Petit Mal’s chaotic adrenalized spirit fuses break-dancing, martial arts and hip-hop movement with a Chinese pole, wild trampoline solos, senseless acrobatics and disjointed juggling with found objects.

Petit Mal launches Carte Blanche, Lighthouse’s season highlighting a wide range of contemporary circus creation and outdoor work, with artists from France, Finland and the UK visiting the venue with performances of exceptional skill and daring physical feats, movement, acrobatics and great music. There will be no tents, no animals, no scary clowns – just a startling family of performers with acts ranging from trapeze, trampolines, poles, wheels, stilt-walking, balancing on hands and more.

Carte Blanche is a cross channel circus alliance collaboration with Lighthouse, La Breche (Cherbourg), Activate and Crying Out Loud, and is produced with financial support of the European Commission through INTERREG IV. The season continues in September and October with Inside Out Festival 2010 Le Rêve D’Herbert, The Mill and Le Grand C.