In recent times, it has become increasingly common to hear that we live by cycles — political cycles, economic cycles, and cycles that lead us towards a certain inevitability in the repetition of history. There are, indeed, universal laws that keep us revolving: the rotation of the Earth, the water cycle, the succession of seasons, the transition between life and death.

For the 11th edition of the Vaudeville Rendez-Vous Festival, we set out to craft a programme that, in some way, reflects on the idea of cycles — at a moment when the festival itself embarks on a new decade. But make no mistake: this is not about going round in circles. Nor is it about moving backwards. We are more like reptiles that shed their skin. We too change skins, with a new visual identity created by Luísa Martelo, which will accompany us in this new cycle. And speaking of cycles — the kind that carry us forward — we open the festival with LA BANDE À TYREX, a whirling, musical ballet on bicycles. This energy of movement continues in RIPPLE, by the Belgian-Dutch company TeaTime Company, where a constantly rotating metal spiral generates a physical and choreographic play of cause and effect, reminding us that no gesture is neutral — every action triggers ripples, reverberates through the body and the space, and leaves its mark in time.

When we reflect on cycles, death inevitably emerges as a presence to be invoked — not as an end, but as a transition. In MASACRADE, by the French company Marcel et Ses Drôles de Femmes, death takes the stage through dark humour, acrobatics, and absurdity, in a choreography that rehearses ways of dying in order to better live. In HOMENAJE, by Catalan artist Sílvia Capell, death is the still instant that allows for a celebration of what was — a still life that pulses and rises through the performer’s body. Both works face death with clarity and poetry, embracing it as part of the cyclical movement that is being alive.

We were also drawn to artists who approach memory and tradition not as static archives, but as living territories in constant renewal. In NKAMA, Dimas Tivane draws on his Mozambican heritage — from the Changana language to the ever-present music and dance of daily life — to create a scenic language where juggling becomes a rhythmic score. In MELIC, the company IF Circus revives the ancestral act of knitting as a metaphor for the transmission of knowledge and emotional bonds between generations, reshaping the stage into a space of care and attentive listening. And in TANCARVILLE, the collective Le G. Bistaki transforms a bedsheet into a poetic device that holds, summons, and distorts time, linking the most intimate of rituals to collective memory.

Between memory and invention, tradition and rupture, we embrace the cycle as a creative impulse — as an invitation to listen, to open up, and to reinvent. May this new cycle find us ready to spin — together — one more time around.