Someone at breakfast last week mentioned in passing a story about a skindiver/scuba diving giant that somehow was part of a presentation in Nantes recently. It struck a chord with me as it sounded very much like the Sultan's Elephant I referenced a few years ago...a presentation by Royal de Luxe. And gol dang it...I was right. Recently (mid July) there was another presentation by this group in Nantes--its home base of the uncle of the young girl (star marionette in the London presentation of the Sultan's Elephant) looking for his niece...this little girl...and his search for her. Then to find out, Royal de Luxe had done some major wiggie presentation featuring squid and these marvelous primordial fish!
Wiki sez:
Royal de Luxe is a French mechanical marionette street theatre company. They were founded in 1979 by Jean Luc Courcoult. Based in Nantes, the company has performed in France, Belgium, England, Germany, Iceland, Chile and Australia.
Revolt of the Mannequins>
La Princesse
Les Machines de Nantes
More visual poetry. More making us think. To see this new diver walking down the street with a crane and the hoards of red coated men in livery jumping off a mobile platform in succession just points up the reason for all of this is for art, for wonder, for the sheer why not ness of the entire idea...beautifully designed, perfectly performed and a moment for the viewers and presenters to marvel at the abilities of man, of a story, of the precise time that our world morphed into this wonderland. Bless these people, their big brains and slippery tongues able to convince big corporations to invest in this sort of puppetry street art.
We are the big country. Its alarming we do not make big ideas like this happen.