Antoine Carabinier-Lépine is the star and founding member of Barbu.
The French-Canadian circus company Cirque Alfonse have brought the “spectacularly raucous and sexy cabaret” show to London Wonderground for a limited run concluding in September.
Starring the world’s most extraordinary, dare-devil acrobats performing with a frenetic electro-trad band, Barbu delves into the origins of the circus in Montreal at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
I recently spoke to Antoine about bringing Barbu to London, how circus continues to evolve and spending his life on tour….
How does it feel to be in London?
It’s great to be here! We performed at the Southbank Centre with our other show two years ago, so we know what it’s like over here. We came to see Limbo here in the Spiegeltent and after the show we were like ‘wow this is such a nice venue and it’s right in the middle of London so why don’t we do our own show like that’. That’s why we wanted to bring Barbu here.
The front row is literally centimetres from the stage – how does it feel to perform in here?
We love that, we’re all big bearded men and when you’re in the front row it’s really full on. I think the audiences like it.
