Lausanne festivity
The city festival opens with a solar note
The first evening of the event confirms the success of a formula that reconciles cultural heritage and event fiery. Report and our favorites.
The public in the Place du Château on Tuesday afternoon to attend the Julian Vogel, Marc Oosterhoff and Simone Aubert show.
Laurent de Senarclens
- The Place du Château hosts a spectacular installation by Julian Vogel with acrobatic performance.
- The Ugandan trio Arsenal Mikebe ignited the public with its energetic percussion.
- The evening ended with the electronic performance of Benefits and Camilla Sparksss.
Debates and controversies about the identity of City festival Probably never stop, but some antagonisms seem to find a way out. At least that is the impression that dominated to attend on Tuesday 1is July, at the opening of a 53e edition as energetic as well -balanced. Historical components (dance, acrobats, etc.), the openness to contemporary creation that a Michael Kinzer and the requirement of an intransigent inclusiveness claimed by a Myriam Kridi are indeed based in the line now defended by Martine Chalverat For three years.
The key to this success? Pay attention to the event force of this addition of artistic proposals which form several possible courses for a curious audience which responds present. Free festival, the city can turn away from the question of the prestige of artists scheduled to focus on the bill for its offer, tailor -made depending on the time and place. And it works, on all kinds of formats, whether it is a particular color to a small peripheral scene or to create a popular craze to a central space like the Place du Château.
From Lausanne in place of the castle
Tuesday, browsing the palette of the city, it was varying the pleasures and surprises, stolen from urban geography. As of the opening, at the age of 5 p.m., the intervention of the extreme theater in Aloïse-Corbaz place launched the festivities with a “sourdly-douce intimidation parade” which managed to sparkle this street corner, away from the obvious course of the old town. A way of reminding the population of “below” that something was going on “above” with four women and acrobats who electrified their improvised audience by breaking a bottle on their heads, dancing with passion, grim in harpies or, oh symbol, by setting fire to the wick of a foter of confetti.
July 1, 2025, Lausanne, Festival de la Cité 2025. © Laurent de Senarclens/ 24 Hours. Independent
© Laurent de Senarclens
Bang! The city was launched. In overwhelming heat, l’installation de Julian Vogel, «Crescendo»shone under the sun of the castle Without understanding the meaning of this large aerial rail decorated with ceramic tubes. In the company of Marc Oosterhoff and Simone Aubert (with live music), the Swiss Circassian unfolded under the eyes of the public the space he had created himself.
Vogel in show and space
Through several numbers, modest but impressive, such as this balance between him and his colleague, on a board in balance on a rope, these acrobats of a new kind boked up a land that the public was invited to AcCaparer. With, as a highest point, the ascent by Marc Oosterhoff of the complete rail, climbs made his eyes blindfolded. Watch out for the fall, full of these ceramic breakage so dear to Julian Vogel!
Julian Vogel and Marc Oosterhoff on a precarious board instead of the castle.
© Laurent de Senarclens
A little later, the mission was fully accomplished with the concert of Arsenal Mikebe, trio of Uganda at the power of percussive fire able to restore the place and its installation to the spectators agglutinated around the musicians. A triumph! The device turns out to be one of the best ever invented by the festival to occupy a space where scene has always been a concern.
Arsenal Mikebe, a percussive trio acclaimed at the city.
Laurent de Senarclens
In the wake of this joyful tumult, even a scenic proposal like that of Mercedes Dassy, ”Spongebabe in La (4 Love & Anxiety)”, managed to make a place in the perched, in the back of the castle of the castle. An impressive and optically disturbing start of show with a dancer who managed, through her jerky but menu movements, to give the illusion of a stroboscopic light …
The Benefits of Haine
Kingsley Hall, singer impact of Benefits.
© Laurent de Senarclens
For music lovers, the end of the evening met Electro and Punk. First at the Grand Canyon with Benefits, a very upset English group against the masters of the world and the treatment reserved for Palestine. Musically, we are sometimes between Leftfield and Faithless, but struck by electronic brutalism without remission … and without great subtlety. The “profit” of the service is due to frontman, Kingsley Hall, to his ability to chant his execration with a completely credible theatricality. A rhetoric of hatred, targeted, but which lost strength when the rapper friend was invited on stage.
So much for the courtyard side because on the garden side (from the small theater) officiated a Camilla Sparksss Who cut her vinyls as black lace for a pretty mean, but thinner result. Witch in the best sense of the word, enchanting singer, the Canada-Tessinoise sharpened her sabbath in the night in front of troops which ended up making the seams of this intimate place crack. A temporary conclusion but magnificent by one of the finest triggers of Swiss music and whose new album is impatiently awaited, «Icu Run»for September.
Living arts: favorites and other nuggets
Delicious Tuesday evening! With, on the side of the arts of the scene, some beautiful moments – absurd, humorous, feminists and even sports or homoerotic. To see again Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. (or in other festivals here or elsewhere), circus, theater, dance. In the early evening and under a blazing sun, “Cow Love” brought together audiences of all ages in front of the (often hilarious) jokes of a duo of French Circassians, stamped “Society protective of small ideas ». Between the somewhat psyche sportswoman and her sentimental-fainful acolyte, a delightfully sadistic game. So much so that it is impossible to know who the clown or the Augustus. For an hour, the two Circassians bicker while trying to draw the blanket … to him or to her. They multiply the kids and stupidities when embarking on a sung performance or acrobatics. Between the two, love is… cow. But the crunchy romance.
Another atmosphere on the side of Place Saint-Maur on the move from 10:15 pm with “Fury Room” Fanny Krähenbühl. On paper, this one on stage – imagined in one of these spaces where you can let go of your impulses by breaking all the objects present – can put off some sensitive souls. Wrongly! The Biennese actress is, certainly, determined to give free rein to her destructive furiousness, but she does it with a stripping humor to denounce the “knobs” of our time, to release her mother rage, her painted pains as a woman … After an hour, we laughed, we participated in her revolt, we let ourselves be subjected by her multiple physical transformations Bancals and by his overflowing imagination. With a final bouquet an public ovation. To see again Wednesday evening before other dates announced in French -speaking Switzerland including that of August at the Yverdonnois Castrum or September festival in Geneva (theater of the wolf).
Tuesday evening ended in sweat, on the midnight thirty, on the side of the Balconies of La Mercerie. The Belgians Arno Ferrera and Gilles Polet had already impressed festival -goers in 2021 with their “leather” homoerotic. In “Armor”, the duo who becomes a trio continues his reflection on masculinity, through sport this time. All in muscles, men mix wrestling, cloakroom games, acrobatic worn and dances. It’s beautiful, it is (very) hot and, above all, very intelligently built to question, without ever provoking, the boundaries of intimacy between men, fragility behind virility.
These three discoveries at the opening of the 53e edition of the city suggest very good for the evenings to come. To be checked by making your personal program in the thirty shows announced until Sunday.
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