Magical ride in hot-air ballon: Acrobatics and live music between heaven and earth.
Sky, balloon and aerial acrobatics.
Hanging rope and trapeze thirty meters above the ground, live music.
A poetic story with an international cast.
Take off and soar, descend on a vertical rope and trapeze from a balloon thirty meters above the ground and glide on…
The Flying Citadel is a project that unites twenty performers and professional musicians.
The team is in tension until the last moment before the balloon takes off, as everything depends mainly on the weather conditions. The collaboration between the Prague and Ostrava productions creates a bold interactive concept in an open air environment for a multigenerational audience.
Let’s reminisce about a time when balloons lined the sky
The Flying Citadel was created as a tribute to Veronique Gougat. I met her in Barnave, France, in the summer of 2023. The dusty dirt and pine-scented roofs of the picturesque mountain village and the wood-beaten circus hut of the size of a full-scale theatre, towering proudly on top of a hill, complemented the authenticity of her speech. She spoke softly and her successful acrobatic past sparkled in her kind eyes. We learned that the mountain circus centre, with its atmosphere of ancient temples, was built and realized entirely from one source: hot-air balloon performances. Veronique is the first aerial acrobat, a performer who took off without a safety harness suspended from a hanging trapeze from a hot air balloon. The poetics and originality of her idea were very well received and we would like to pay tribute to her,“ says director Jan Jirák.
