For the month of February in 2019, a new production from France calledWhen Angels Fall by Cie L’Oubliée’s founder and director Raphaëlle Boitel is visiting the USA, performing several shows at three university locations,Montclair State University in New Jersey, Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts and Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Programmers from universities around the country are beginning to see the benefit to programming complex multi-disciplinary work like Boitel’s, as it fosters a spirit of cultural exchange, and compliments arts curriculum, not to mention that it draws a broader crowd beyond the student population.

Still, Boitel’s background and the heart of her work are in circus, even while she discusses developing a new choreographic language, she always falls back on the physicality circus introduced to her as a young Fratellini circus school student studying under Annie Fratellini. CircusTalk contributor Madeline Hoak and I were both fortunate enough to see  When Angels Fall   along with a packed and appreciative house in Alexander Kasser Theatre at Montclair State University. After the show, like most of the audience, we had a lot to ruminate over, so we vowed to do it together, bouncing ideas off of each other in our first ever co-review. ...