Tutti Matti per Colorno

This translates into “Everbody is crazy for Colorno”. It is a circus festival, or rather a festival of street and independent circus performers, and once a year it transforms the rather sleepy town close to Parma into something very special.

At the heart of Colorno is a Ducale Palace, which tries to look a bit like Versailles, and is the home of a cooking school (“ALMA”). The palace and its garden, and the piazza in front are the arena for many artists and performances, and given the many folks coming in mostly from the area, it feels a bit like a village festival.

One of the main reasons we discovered the festival is: Le Cirque Bidon, which we try to visit every year since we discovered it 8 years ago in Indre/France. It normally tours through the Loire-Area in France in horse chariots, but this year mostly entertains small towns in Emilia Romana, to finally reach Colorno to open the festival. It is the signature performance of the festival for some years now.

The Cirque Bidon has as very special magic that is hard to describe. It is modest, creative, non-compliant, heart-felt, and even if the team is mostly different from that of 8 years ago, it still is the same circus of Mr. Bidon. In some way Cirque Bidon is to circus what Studio Ghibli is to animated movies.

There is a packed program that makes it quite difficult not to miss things, among our highlights were: La Dinamica del Controvento, Teatro del sottosuolo and Alta Gama.

We will likely come again, though we have two wishes: That the festival is not split into two week-ends, and that it starts earlier for the kids. Or we simply need to cruise the Emilia Romana in-between … CU next year!