Bristol’s Cirque Bijou gives a sneak peek of their performance ahead of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pageant

Cirque Bijou, the Bristol-based contemporary circus and street theatre company, is joining some of the biggest names in the UK outdoor arts and carnival scene, as well as hundreds of community and professional artists, to take part in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pageant.

The event will be held in London on 5th June to celebrate 70 years of the Queen’s reign and is expected to have all the excitement and spectacle of an international carnival.

According to the official release, artistic performers, dancers, musicians, military personnel, key workers and volunteers will unite to tell the story of The Queen’s 70-year reign in an awe-inspiring festival of creativity.

The London-based Pageant will combine pomp and ceremony, street arts, theatre, music, circus, costumes as well as cutting-edge visual technology, drawing on talent from every part of the United Kingdom and across the Commonwealth.

Quite incredibly, Cirque Bijou, which has been going for around 24 years, is the only Bristol creative contributor to the event, which will take place in front of a global audience of hundreds of millions.

The company, based in Easton, does shows all over the world and they are really interested in diversity. They create a lot of work with able-bodied and disabled artists, and as much different influence as they can.

Cirque Bijou pushes the boundaries of contemporary circus, street theatre and spectacle, seeking out the new, unexpected and extraordinary to create unforgettable and exquisitely-crafted shows for any stage or space.

They were approached by Pageant Master Adrian Evans over a year ago and since then have been busy planning their section of the parade – working on a vision for a young, diverse, urban performance on a moving platform.

So, what can people expect? “The Jubilee approached us and asked us to create a float all around the theme of unity in the UK,” starts artistic director Mr Bracey.

“We’ve got a really diverse bunch of artists putting this together. We’ve collaborated with a really big hip-hop group from London called The Steppaz, and lots of circus performers and wheelchair users.

“We’ve created a mobile stage, which is about 20 metres long. We’ve got 100 hip hop dancers, we’ve created a mobile trampoline wall so as the float moves along there’ll be people running up and down, aerolifts flying on the tops of it, breakdancers on the back and big wheels and all sorts of things.”

The trampoline wall on the float will see Backflip Ben and his trampolinists show off their incredible skills, whilst UK trials mountain bike champion Danny Butler and his team will be riding around and performing tricks on and off the moving vehicle.

Award-winning London-based fashion house Teatum Jones is costuming the entire company of over 100 artists, too.

Mr Bracey tells me how challenging something like this can be to put together, particularly considering the float is a moving object. “The challenge is making sure that the different pieces fit together and complement each other and that we can do that safely moving along,” he explains.

“There is the challenge of getting through Admiralty Arch, over speedbumps, under camera wires and still performing a very high-level circus. It’s quite crazy.”

It sounds like quite a mean feat, and that’s exactly where this week’s sneak peek dress rehearsal comes in. “We’ve been working on it for about a year now,” says Mr Bracey.

“You do as much research and development as you can and you’re fairly confident that it will work but you don’t really know until you try it,” says Mr Bracey. “We’ve been doing that this week and it’s all working so we’re very happy.”

I wonder how it feels to be asked to perform in something quite so iconic and unique. “It’s really great, after being in hibernation and lockdown for quite a while, it’s great to be working with so many established companies and lots of people again,” smiles Mr Bracey.

He goes on to tell me that representing Bristol within the Pageant is really special, too. “I think Bristol has always been a really interesting place for multiculturalism and the arts, which has helped us create great music, theatre and circus, so we’re representing Bristol very much,” he says.

So, when it came to the sneak peek and dress rehearsals this week, how did they go and what did people love? “I haven’t heard too much feedback but everyone seemed happy and it went brilliantly - really well actually I think.

“I think people were quite surprised to see the mountain bikes jumping from one vehicle to the other, I think that was a big moment. We had the pageant health and safety officer come and watch that yesterday,” laughs Mr Bracey.

“I think the trampoline wall is a big feature. We’ve got six trampolinists doing somersaults as we’re moving which just looks fantastic.”

What’s Mr Bracey most excited about? “I’m just excited working with this many performers on this scale,” he beams. “We love working with scale and we have performers as young as six and up to 60, so a real broad range and it’s going to be fantastic.”