Festus

Created by Recirquel, one of the world’s leading contemporary circus companies, Festus is the company’s new stage production drawing on the spiritual imagination and musical heritage of Romani communities – a culture that has woven an invisible thread through Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans for centuries.

Festus unfolds as a communal celebration where the defining moments of human existence – birth and death, love and separation, grief and joy, solitude and togetherness – flow into one another.

As the earthly and the spiritual converge, the stage becomes a space where ritual, memory, and imagination reveal the threads that bind a community together.

Created in the company’s signature cirque danse style, where contemporary circus and modern dance become inseparable, Festus marks a new chapter in that approach.

It brings in disciplines never before seen in Recirquel’s work – folk dance and whip artistry – alongside aerial and ground-based circus, powerful scenography, expressive choreography, and light, transforming living tradition into a unified contemporary stage language.

The original score is being created through extensive research into Romani musical traditions – their rhythms, melodies, and vocal traditions reshaped into an original contemporary soundscape. Festus will tour in two versions: with a recorded score, or with three to four live musicians on stage.