WOW (World of Words), from the acclaimed Cirque Kalabanté, is a work of physical theater and cirque performed almost entirely without words.
The performance opens with a line drawn across the stage. On one side, a group carries knowledge rooted in the tradition, culture, and daily life of Guinea in West Africa. They pass it on through storytelling, song and ritual initiation. On the other side, a second group receives that knowledge, sometimes with curiosity and sometimes with fear or resistance.
At first, spoken language keeps the two groups apart. As the story unfolds, they find other ways to communicate: gesture, rhythm and sound, and the ropes strung across the set. Double Dutch, bungee and rope-based contortion become a shared vocabulary for the conversation between the two sides. Three guiding figures, named Trust, Respect and Wisdom, move between the groups and shape the exchange.
The performers then move into acrobatic partnering, lifting, balancing and supporting one another. As they do, the line across the stage matters less and less. Traditional West African movement and contemporary cirque stop reading as separate vocabularies and become one. The show ends with a full-company finale.
Live music runs through the whole performance. The percussion, song and traditional instruments are as central to the storytelling as the acrobatics.
WOW is about how knowledge passes from one group to another, and about what has to happen before two groups of people can understand each other.
About the Company
Founded in 2007 by Guinean artist Yamoussa Bangoura, Cirque Kalabanté is a Montreal-based company that combines the dance, music and acrobatic traditions of West Africa with contemporary cirque. Bangoura is the company’s artistic director, choreographer and composer. He describes the name Kalabanté as meaning a child who always wants to try something new and is the first among his friends to try it.
Bangoura grew up in Conakry, Guinea’s capital, in the 1990s, when the city had no formal circus training. He learned by studying circus performers on television and practicing on the beach near his home. He went on to join Circus Baobab, Guinea’s first major circus troupe, and toured Africa and Europe with them. He also trained in traditional African dance with the Saamato troupe and worked with Les Ballets Africains. While on tour in Spain, he was spotted by Montreal’s Cirque Éloize, and from 2002 to 2007 he helped create and perform the company’s world tour of Nomade. From 2010 to 2012 he was a featured performer in Cavalia’s large-scale equestrian production Odysseo, leading a group of Guinean acrobats he had brought from home. He has also performed with Cirque du Soleil.
Bangoura works across disciplines. As a musician, he sings and plays the kora, the balafon and percussion. As a circus artist, he performs on aerial straps and the Cyr wheel and does acrobatics. Many members of his extended family perform in the company, including his siblings and cousins.
From its home in Montreal’s Saint-Michel neighborhood, Kalabanté has created a series of original productions, including Afrique en Cirque, Kô Ryass, Kumbaya and Kira Nene. It has toured throughout Canada and the United States and to festivals abroad, including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Adelaide Fringe. In 2018 it opened a studio and school in Montreal that offers classes in African dance, cirque and drumming. The company also supports the Guinean community that Bangoura and many of its artists come from.
In 2023, Bangoura was one of three artists to receive the first Circus Arts Recognition Awards, presented by En Piste (Canada’s national circus arts association) and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. They were the first awards dedicated to circus arts in Quebec.