The Award - Back Pocket - Le Radiant - Caluire

Back Pocket returns with The Award at Radiant-Bellevue

From our stage at Radiant-Bellevue in Caluire-et-Cuire, we are delighted to welcome Back Pocket with their kinetic creation The Award, a piece that distills the troupe’s hallmark blend of virtuosic acrobatics, comic timing, and theatrical finesse. Our team has watched the ensemble shape a show that speaks the language of movement with the mischievous spirit of street theatre, inviting audiences into a world where balance, trust, and laughter share center stage. The Award unspools like a ceremony turned on its head: statues become human, podiums wobble, and applause is transformed into the soundtrack of daring lifts and fluid, ensemble-built pyramids. In our hall—renowned for clear sightlines and an intimate proximity to performers even in the larger configuration—the details read vividly: clasped hands before a risky pass, micro-expressions in moments of clowning, and the breath that drifts across the room just before a collective catch. Back Pocket’s physical vocabulary—hand-to-hand passages, cascading tumbling phrases, breath-synced lifts—meets a dramaturgy that is playful yet precise, delivering a work that feels both finely crafted and joyfully spontaneous.

Inside the live pulse of The Award

Staged at Radiant-Bellevue, The Award is designed as a living conversation between bodies, rhythm, and audience energy. The show’s momentum surges through scenes that pivot from cheeky mock-ceremonial pageantry to intimate duets, from ensemble towers to sudden slapstick collapses that reset the stakes with a wink. We have tailored our technical environment to frame these shifts with warmth and clarity: lights carve crisp silhouettes when the troupe suspends time mid-flight; focused pools of amber isolate tender balances and breathing exchanges; wider washes open the space for communal crescendos where the entire company moves as one organism. Without a single word, Back Pocket charts a narrative about recognition—who gives it, who receives it, and how, under pressure, we hold each other up. The live soundscape—body percussion, footfalls, percussive props, and the contagious cadence of applause—anchors the choreography in a heartbeat that’s shared by performers and audience alike. Families, dance-lovers, and contemporary circus aficionados will recognize a language that is accessible, inventive, and generous, inviting laughter one moment and a hush of collective awe the next.

As a venue embedded in the cultural tempo of the Lyon metropolitan area, we follow Back Pocket’s artistic news with attention and pride. The company continues to tour widely with The Award this season, refining transitions, expanding interactive cues, and deepening the comic and narrative threads with each performance. Between dates, their artists remain active in creative research and pedagogy, channeling their ensemble ethos into workshops that foreground trust, safe risk-taking, and musicality in movement—values that echo the spirit we champion at Radiant-Bellevue. Hosting Back Pocket aligns with our commitment to programming that merges technical excellence with generous storytelling; our stage crew partners closely with the company to calibrate spacing for their ensemble builds, to tune the floor for supple rebounds, and to shape a sound image that carries even the quietest gestures to the back row. For audiences in Caluire-et-Cuire and beyond, The Award arrives as both an artistic celebration and a communal ritual, a reminder that recognition is most meaningful when it is shared—and that in the theatre, as in life, we rise highest when we lift together.