B-FIT in the Street!, the International Festival of Street Theater Bucharest, organized bythe City Hall of Bucharest and ARCUB,is about to start. For three days, between the 12thand the 14thof July, two hundred international artists will come to Bucharest with seventeen showsand more than sixty performancesin key areas of the city. At the top of the festival agenda there are award-winning shows, interactive performances, workshops for children, acrobatic feats, juggling, the parade B-FIT in the Street!, contemporary dance performances, and, for the first time, demonstrations of free running on the roofs of Bucharest.
The festival will officially start at 7 p.m. on Friday, the 12thof July, in University Square, the central location of the festivalwhich will host, throughout the festival, samba, Scottish music and marching band performances, the Italian flag wavers’ acrobatic feats, as well as artists on stilts, mobile shows with fantastic characters and contemporary dance shows combined with circus elements, and the Mascot of B-Fit in the Street!
Entitled “Point Zero/Zéro Degré”, the show has been rescheduled for Saturday, July 13th, starting at 7 p.m., in “George Enescu” Square. “Point Zero/Zéro Degré” is one of the much awaited premieres of this year’s edition and is brought to Bucharest by the French company La Fabrique Royale.
“Point Zero/Zéro Degré” has been especially created for the festival in Bucharest and presents an authentic free-running demonstration on Calea Victoriei. The free-running artists will move from one roof to another, on a spectacular itinerary, and they will defy gravity with their impressive physical ability and minute precision; they will start in “George Enescu” Square, then move on to “Carol I” Central University Library, the building of Academiei Center, Grand Hotel Intercontinental, Novotel Hotel, “Constantin Tănase” Variety Theater, Ramada Hotel, and Odeon Theater.
The free-running show will have two representations. After its premiere on July 13th, “Point Zero/Zéro Degré” will have a last representation on Sunday, July 14th, thus marking the closure of the French-Romania Season in Bucharest.
“Free-running connects you to the playfulness of your own childhood. For us, it gives us many opportunities to play in the city, with the respective city. Architecture is the raw material of the show. <Zero Degree> makes the spectators have a different perspective on their city, on their surroundings. We like to stimulate the audience, to trigger reactions. We work directly in the field in order to create something unique, a special show, which will not be put on anywhere else in the world, except for Bucharest.”(Franklin Roulot, director of La Fabrique Royale).
Another important event of the festival is the yearly PARADE of B-Fit in the Street!, which will begin on Saturday(the 13thof July) at 9 p.m. in “George Enescu” Square.
For the first time, before the great parade, “George Enescu” Square will host mask creation workshops held by the artists of The School from Piscu. At 6 p.m., the spectators will be invited to get in the mood for the great parade B-FIT in the Street! by participating in a mask creation workshop. The masters of “The School from Piscu” will come to “George Enescu” Square to help the children and the adults attending the festival to enjoy the festive atmosphere of the parade by creating multi-coloured masks in various forms. Then the public are invited to join the artists of B-FIT in the Street! who will start marching in the parade.
The workshops for children will be held in parallel with two performances of the British contemporary dance show entitled “Captive”. In addition, the Romanian artists from Masca Theater will put on “The History of the Dance”, a show with living statues.
At 9 p.m.,the artists of the eleventh edition of the festival will gather on the streets of Bucharest for the parade of B-FIT in the Street! 2019, the International Street Theater Festival. Flag wavers, pipers, drummers and trumpeters, acrobats, artists on stilts, dancers and fantastic characters will leave George Enescu Square dancing on their way out and they will cross the center of the city via Calea Victoriei andRegina Elisabeta Boulevard. The parade of the festival will stop in University Square where the French artists from Remue Ménagewill close the festival with “Flamingo Birds”,a show of dance, music, and acrobatic feats.
Revolution Square, Odeon Theater Small Square and the locations in the Old City (Roma Square, “Sfȃntul Anton” Square, Lipscani Street, and Gabroveni Street) will complete the map of the edition with shows from Italy, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Romaniaevery day of the festival.
The last day of the festival will also mark the end of the Romania-France Season, on Sunday, the14thof July, with an eclectic program of street theater shows in the nine key locationsin Bucharest. The French free-running artists will put on one last performance of their show “Point Zero/ Zéro Degré”,on Calea Victoriei, while the acrobats of the famous French company Remue Ménagewill hold two shows that will simultaneously take place in University Square (“Flamingo Birds”) and in the Old City, in Lipscani Street (“Toys”).
