At La Scala in Paris, the winning numbers of Circus Baobab

It begins with legs spread facing the audience, a half-acrobatic, half-gynecological position, who announces the program of the show, largely populated by female artists (six out of the nine who make up the troupe). For a good hour, a series of numbers like so many sketches, sometimes mysterious, sometimes more literal, address the status of women in Guinea-Conakry, in a successful – and oh so risky – mix of African art and new Western circus.

Circus Baobab is a traveling collective of Guinean artists, born in 1998, then reinvested in 2021 with new circus artists, many of whom were discovered in the streets of Conakry, and made famous at high speed during an appearance on the popular show La France a un incroyable talent . On the bare stage, these young and old people, dressed in colorful hybrid costumes - a mix of traditional outfits and sports jerseys - practice apparatus taken from the Guinean landscape: the gray concrete blocks of the city, balanced on the head like merchandise, and the white trunks, which serve as a Chinese pole or beam from which to launch themselves in a triple jump. They accompany all their numbers with songs in the Soussou language and varied dances that mix local steps with jolts of globalized hip-hop.

In this mixture like a well-woven patchwork, acrobats and tightrope walkers question in their bodies the relationship between men and women in their country. If i