Tightrope walker Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga, one of the world’s rare women highwire tightrope walkers, has been organising these collective adventure skywalk aerial performances without a harness for the past ten years. In Rennes, twenty metres above the Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle, she will entrust her “cavalettis” (ropes laid astride the main cable) to sixty or so local residents. Over the course of the two hundred metres of this aerial journey, they are the ones who will work from the ground to stabilise the complex structure supporting the tightrope. It’s a unifying and extraordinary circus ceremony, a magnificent collective adventure combining music, acrobatics and mutual trust.
BIOGRAPHY
> TATIANA-MOSIO BONGONGA / Compagnie BASINGA (France)
Compagnie Basinga was founded in 2013 in Sauve (southern France). It is co-directed by Jan Naets and Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga, and is entirely dedicated to the art of tightrope walking. The company works to make it a collective rather than a solo discipline, through research, teaching, innovation and experimentation with new materials and participatory performances. Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga began training in the art of tightrope walking from the age of eight at the Hérouville-Saint-Clair circus school, and then at the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC) in Châlon-en-Champagne before joining various live performance companies and festivals. In 2012 she won a gold medal at the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in 2012, and created her own company the following year. After working as a volunteer at the Zomer Van Antwerpen festival (Antwerp), Jan Naets joined the Arts Sauts as a general manager and now holds the same position for Cirk Vost and Compagnie Basinga. Soka Tira Osoa and Traversée are currently on tour, along with Lignes Ouvertes, with a dozen emblematic tight-rope crossings: Sacré-Coeur hill (Paris), Vltava River (Prague), Pinçon Park (Bordeaux), Swiss canton of Vevey, etc.
