The 2025 UK tour of Jeannot Painchaud's Canadian based Cirque Éloize has quite a story behind iD Reloaded arriving in the UK at all. Cirque Éloize were originally meant to bring a different show but a flood at their Montreal warehouse destroyed the set, along with much of their equipment. The idea of a 21st-century sequel to the 2009 iD had been in the back of the mind of company co-founder and artistic director Painchaud for a while and thus, iD Reloaded was born.
Billed as a show including circus arts, urban dance music (by Jean-Phi Goncalves and Alex McMahon), b-boying/b-girling, breakdance, hip-hop and a whole lot more, it is set in the heart of a city, complete with skyscrapers as a backdrop. With set designs by Frederick Ouellet, costumes by Liz Vandal, lighting by Stéphane Ménigot and phenomenal video design by Bernard Mauran and Yannick Doucet, the audience was pretty much launched into the atmospheric setting. A group of people meet in a space where they can express their individuality. From the opening to the very last moment, the people at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre were rapt.
I was in a permanent state of either awe or extreme anxiety. It was a thrilling experience and one that I would gladly repeat. In a series of supremely well choreographed sequences, the cast demonstrated both individual circus skills and extraordinary dance abilities across a range of genres. And the pace was fast and furious.
To the sounds of traffic and general city hubbub, the show began with the company of nine performers walking and eventually running across the stage in monochrome coats which eventually came off to reveal brightly coloured outfits. This was the calm before the storm. The dancing began with stunning passages of breakdance that provoked gasps from the audience. This led into the first hair-raising event where three men leapt up a pole and executed daring manoeuvres which involved coming down it at breakneck speed and in compromising positions, some face first.
Highlights included a scene where a series of red ropes took French skipping to another level. The cast literally breakdancing their way through swirling ropes, occasionally flying horizontally over them. There was inevitably a contortionist (Alexia Medesan) who set herself apart from the norm with the sheer grace of her movements and her beautifully stretched feet. Her charming duet with one of the men raised eyebrows as he sat on the ground, leaning on a box while she tickled his head with her feet, bent double on her front.
Adam Dransfield, superb b-boy, was given well deserved applause for his extraordinary display of strength with chairs. He was able to stay in almost any position whilst balancing on as many as five or six chairs. An exercise in extreme upper body control and genuine power, his core must be unimaginably strong. There were tremendously exciting acts with straps, aerials and Cyr wheel which all begged the question, ‘How did he/she/they do that?’
And then there was JP Deltell who juggled impeccably whilst nimbly dancing his way through his number. Perhaps one of the most memorable acts was the trampolining. Part of its appeal was the musicality, the way the three men along with various other cast members, bounded and flipped within the phrasing.
The most electrifying act was Trevor Bodogh on his trial bike. Bodogh made his bike dance. Absolutely on the beat, he hopped on his back wheel, jumped between legs, climbed the set and made me drop my notepad, I was so excited (or was I terrified?). I’m not entirely sure the member of the audience who was taken onto the stage to partake in some of the stunts wasn’t in on it, but who cares when it’s this much fun?
Throughout the performance it was possible to marvel at multiple pirouettes (on the head of course) and gravity defying jumps that led the audience to whoop and cheer. This was an occasion when it felt like a celebration of all the arts and of those artists who are at the top of their chosen art form.
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