Festival Intergalactique des Bateaux-Spectacle!

Last month, something extraordinary happened. Something, the world has never seen before. A colorful fleet of clowns, jugglers, fire dancers, acrobats, magicians, painters, circus artists, actors, mermaids, musicians and filmmakers, all living and sailing on boats, gathered in one place. In the little port of Locmiquélic, Bretagne in France. The first Festival Intergalactique des Bateaux-Spectacle has been born from the deep salty seas. A festival of people sailing on boats sharing their unique projects and way of life.

We were a group of us from the Alternative Sailing Community present at the festival. The three days, the festival lastet, was full of magic. In the mornings, there were meetings to network between the projects and other interested. The varieties of shows later in the day and creativity including the boats, was mind blowing. One group did a show on the their boat; An accordionist sitting on the spreader and a saxophonist half balancing on the side of the mast, playing music to a balancing act on ropes between the masts, while mermaids swam around the boat. Clowns doing acrobats on the boom of another boat, made the whole crowd roll around in laughter. Another boat, projected funny and environmental animation short films on the sails. A jazz band played up to swing dance, from a bright yellow catamaran. On land beatboxing miming clowns and jugglers drew a huge crowd. Workshops ranging from knots binding to dance classes and clowning. Spectacular theatre shows and stalls, with art and books made on the crossings, and food, was one of many to lure you into spending an extra euro. And late night DJ’s and jams around the fire, scared away even the coldest western wind.

We had made a stand with pictures and information about ASC. We were also present in the morning meetings, where we presented the community and showed some of our many films. The interest was huge. We did a little fire show, as part of the big Cabaret on Friday night. With us, we had a very a special guest, Jossie from Vanua Fire, we met in Vanuatu. And a group of us made pizza in a homemade oven to rise money for one of the boats, Layla, in Brazil. But most importantly, we spoke to a lot of interesting people and made many connections to work together in the future. There is an overall wish to create a platform for all of these beautiful projects to collaborate and help each other. A mailing list has been formed and a wiki page is in the making.