The giant bell rung, waking up people to gather around. The eight bell ringers’ ran amidst the crowd with the bell on their hand and hop on to the chariot-like stages lit with gothic torchlight. Turn by turn, they rung the bell to call people sometimes for community prayers, sometimes to have food and sometimes to share the good news or even scare away evil spirits.
like a magical music box, the drama unfolded with the sweet symphony of the bells, taal (manjira) and drums played by the bewitching bell ringers standing in the corners of the huge carillon that slowly lifted it up in the air to 55 meters by a crane. Casting a spell amid the backdrop of the twinkling stars and the shining moon, the huge carillon staging the magnificent act opened its wings like a flower, revolving at a high speed with three aerialists dancing like fairies.
Taking us back to the medieval era, French performance company Transe Express enacted the drama of aerial symphony in their magnificent show titled Celestial Carillon with the orchestra of eight bell-ringers and aerialists lifted skyward. A 20-year-old show directed by Gillies Rhodes, co-founder of Transe Express, the Celestial Carillon is inspired from Alexander Calder’s art of combining theatre, music and fine arts on the Carillon structure hung in the air.
“I was inspired by Alexander Calder’s sculptures which are very high in the air and very light weighted. The idea was to create a Calder like structure that can lift the entire theatre act in the air. The good thing is that everybody can see and get the best view of it. It is like a child looking into the twinkling sky and was awe-struck by the fairytale fantasy or dream,” says Rhodes, who brought the show to India for the first time and marks the end of the three-month-long Bonjour India festival in the Capital recently.
The sleigh bells tinkle and jingle, wedding bells ring and chime, alarm bells clang, and funeral bells toll and knell. Creating music from the bells of all shapes and sizes used for varied purposes and at different moments, Rhodes consciously chooses the bells to be the main instruments in the entire act.
“The sound of the bell is the music of the air which one can hear from far-away places. Bells communicate all the emotions. It is a very beautiful and strong instrument that is popular in every country. In French tradition, we have bells ringing for every moment, at a certain point in time. There are bells in churches, in dining areas to call everyone for the food and at the doors of every house. There are cowbells too.
In India, bells are very common in the temples, for the wedding and bells are also a part of attire and people wear it while dancing. Similarly, in this act, each bell ringer rings the bell for a different reason and on a different chariot like stages,” Rhodes explains, who also performed this show with his crew in Hyderabad and Chennai.
It is the Carillon, the magnanimous machinery that is beautifully created and holds all the 26 bells, one of which in its centre is 250 kilos. “I was looking for a structure which can open like a flower. I made a small demo model of the Carillon with iron rods and then found the right engineers who create the huge model that can sustain in the air and we can stage the 45 minutes act,” Rhodes says.
Doing trapeze, cloud swings, hanging upside down on a piece of cloth or on a swing, the three aerialist dancers performed with much élan and grabbed a lot of crowd cheer. “It is very scary to leave your hands and still hanging in the air. When I choreographed the show for the first time, I decided to go up in the air on the Carillon to check if I really feel afraid of the height and I was extremely scared. I couldn’t stand for long and had to stop and come down. But these artists are fearless and they love to go up in the air and would like to remove the harness and perform. But since we are very meticulous and strict technically, we ensure that everyone wears the safety gears. There was never a time when anyone fell off but we’ve decided that if somebody falls by mistake during the performance, they are safe with the harness on and we also force the show to stop,” Rhodes shares.
The most challenging thing was to coordinate the music in the air with all the performers hanging in the air far away from each other. “We worked for a year on the metronome to get the notes and the beats and the coordination right. I was looking for the artists who can play the instrument and is not afraid of the height. We held the auditions and cast these performers. People in this team really like this show and since 20 years, they have been performing across the world,” Rhodes tells you adding that they might soon come up with another show in Jaipur and would like to work with the Indian artists as he enjoys the Bollywood singing and dancing choreography a lot.