Circa Contemporary Circus

Seventeen talented Australian directors from diverse artistic disciplines each create a chapter of the hauntingly beautiful novel by multi award-winning author Tim Winton. The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.

On June 14 and 15, 2025, in the Pierre Boulez auditorium, the Philharmonie de Paris welcomed the acrobats of the Australian company Circa for their show En masse, a creation combining contemporary circus and classical music—the fiery tale of a fallen civilization and its rebirth, carried by great pieces from the repertoires of Franz Schubert and Igor Stravinsky. German tenor Hans Jörg Mammel, an accomplished interpreter of the Austrian composer, sang several excerpts from the Lieder, while pianists Tanguy de Williencourt and Thomas Enhco, virtuosos of the young French scene, performed a duet that captured all the cataclysmic verve of The Rite of Spring.