The largest and most challenging project in the history of our company is coming back in a new version.
Cesty (Roads) have gone through many obstacles and transformations, but eventually, after a year, they took us back to you. After three years of hard work we want to celebrate with you the fact that we can be all together once again. For us, Cesty have become a matter of the heart in which we have invested an incredible amount of energy. Through this we want to pay tribute to the uniqueness of circus art and its history, and therefore there will be even more acrobats in the show than there were last year. We are going to perform with the students of the Kyiv circus school who have found a safe asylum with us at the time of the war conflict in their country. You can look forward to more than 50 acrobats, actors, dancers, and musicians, who create the Cirk La Putyka, from various parts of the world and across generations.
You will see what you have never seen before. Clown performances as well as demanding and breathtaking shows and group choreographies.
Circus art fascinates us. It is an art full of authenticity, freedom, risk, poetry, laughter, tears, sweat, pain, and teamwork. An art full of respect and trust, which has been here with us for several centuries. Circus is an art that had mesmerized us and took us to the Cesty project. We are fascinated by this hard labour as well as by the specific theatrical poetry of the circus arena. We want to share with you the unique stories that it tells by our company and also by formerly the largest European circus of the principal Karel Kludsky.
The show comprises four chapters. The first one covers the history of the traditional circus art, which is viewed through the Kludsky family. With love and fascination by the craft we draw inspiration by Karel Kludsky, the former principal of Circus Kludsky, his circus tent featuring four arenas for ten thousand people, his passion for elephants, the greatest circus shows and real stories. We let ourselves get carried away by the poetry of circus and by the magic of the circus arena.
The second chapter is about the company of Cirk La Putyka, about our personal stories, our experiences, about the everyday operation of our theatre. You will see the founding members of Cirk La Putyka, members of the youngest budding generation, as well as the young Ukrainian students with whom we are now sharing our theatre and training facilities, and who have, for the time being become a part of us. You will see our joint search for the ways to the hearts of the audience, which has been taking place for more than 13 years and still goes on.
The third chapter reflects on our creative work during the pandemics under the #kulturunezastavis initiative and our desire to keep carrying on despite all the odds and adverse circumstances. We have abandoned theatres and looked for new ways how to reach our audiences. What were all the places where we have encountered circus, dance, or theatre? What were all the places where we managed to keep culture alive?
The fourth chapter is a celebration of the present moment and togetherness. A celebration that after a year we are all here again. Come and celebrate with us!
“Circus is hard work, really very hard. The audience mostly sees just the beauty and the effect. Nobody sees the hard work. Man must be powerful, and I have not slept for three thousand nights of my life.”
– Karel Kludsky (from the book “Life in the Manege”)