On the Tightrope of our (Im)balances – 2024/2025

At the St-Jacques Hospital in Nantes, the Eating Disorders department decided in 2022 to rename itself “Basinga” in reference to the imbalances that its patients fight against, and which the company transforms into its strength and poetry.

During a meeting in 2023, the desire to take the collaboration further was born. The wish to build links between the company and the department, to establish themselves as partners in a cultural initiative that takes a new direction we call Tangente: these cultural interventions in closed environments (prison, school, hospital, college, company), which often lead to in situ creations. Tangente projects are immersive projects aimed at breaking down barriers within Basinga and also within the institutions involved.

Many parallels were identified between these two “Basinga,” and the parallel between the solitary dimension of the tightrope walker and the patient made even more sense. The tightrope walker is not alone; they have a team, musiciens, riggers, just as patients are supported by caregivers, family, and loved ones.

Several interventions around the tightrope and the figure of the tightrope walker have already taken place in 2024 in preparation for the inauguration of the department and a cultural action project that should result in a tailor-made performance in 2025.

2025 will mark a new stage in this collaboration.

🔸 May 29 to June 2 – Around World Eating Disorders Day on June 2.

On this occasion, singing and tightrope workshops will be offered to patients and healthcare staff from May 29 to June 2. A public performance with a tightrope walk will take place in the hospital courtyard.

🔸 Fall 2025 – Immersion of the company within the CRREO-TCA Basinga department and the CHU of Nantes.

For six days, seven artists from the Basinga company will immerse themselves in the TCA units (Eating Disorders) of the Barbara and Lou-Andréas Salomé Centers. Small group workshops, attuned to each individual’s rhythms, will focus on the tightrope, singing, music, movement, images, and ropes, with collective sessions for larger groups as possibilities allow.

At the end of this immersion: a public presentation, in situ. A suspended, shared moment, with those who have walked, vibrated, and found their own point of balance.

Project to support a group of young apprentice tightrope walkers from priority neighborhoods – March / Oct 2023

Basinga leads a project with young people from priority neighborhoods in various French cities, where the Traversée territory project has been implemented.

These young people were all trained as tightrope walkers in open-access outdoor workshops during the Traversée program in their neighborhoods.

As part of its partnership with CIRCa (the Circus Center in Auch, France) and the “Fédération Française des Ecoles de Cirque” (French Federation of Circus Schools), Basinga will take this group of young people to the 2023 edition of the CIRCa festival, to introduce them to the world of contemporary circus, give them the opportunity to present their work on stage in public, and continue to defend the accessibility of art to everyone.

Within this emblematic festival of the circus world, and historic gathering of circus schools from France and abroad, the arrival of this group will also highlight the teaching of tightrope walking.

Tomorrow, as you see it, as you make it

10 days at the Mathalin Medical and Educational Institute in Auch.

As part of its partnership with CIRCa (the Circus Center in Auch, France) Basinga will spend a week at the medical and educational institute (IME) Mathalin in Auch, inviting young people from the institute to shape the world of tomorrow they hope for, worry about or desire, in an unbridled way, through a wide range of artistic expressions.

In a few months or years, the young people at the IME Mathalin will be as autonomous as possible to lead their lives in the world. Tomorrow brings a thousand images, unbalances us, delights us or worries us. So let’s have fun shaping it as we would like it to be!

The Basinga company offers young people a multi-faceted artistic experience, inviting them to imagine and build “their” world, the world of their future, the world of their nightmares, the world of their dreams.

Using a variety of artistic media, the young people will create spaces in sound, matter, movement and image that can be observed and crossed like a living and moving exhibition. Photography, body expression, balancing on a tightrope, sound creation, plastic fabrication and rope play are all tools that the Basinga company uses in synergy in its own work. Basinga invites young people to play with these tools to freely create large-scale images of their dream world. They will be artisans, actors, curators, performers and audiences of this living exhibition, which will play with the large and the small, the risky and the impossible, the dream and the mad.