Galop Arrière

"With this film, I wanted, in a backwards gallop, to turn myself around and visit myself with curiosity. Tracking an itinerary of initiation as a plunge into the abyss and trying to deliver what I had for too long  disguised as force."

For a long time considered an equestrian utopia, the "backwards gallop" requires an incredible understanding and control between the horse and its rider, as well as the exceptional capacity to  move backwards while constantly facing forward. So it was natural for Bartabas to evoke his entire itinerary and that of the Théâtre Zingaro, to choose this lofty title and singular perspective: a way of going back in time. The idea was to explore and resuscitate here 25 years of artistic adventures. The project in no way resembles a more or less nostalgic remembrance. The film offered to us is original and  accomplished. The furious ardour of Cabarets, the challenges of Opera, the magic of Chimera, the pure beauty of Eclipse, the painful  celebration of Triptych, the active meditation of Lounga, the iconoclastic charge of Battuta, everything is found there. And however, an addition of a secret and intimate story is written, which uses the words of poets to recount the meaning of an unusual, risky, irreducible, inspired life. A life definitely in the form of the rider destiny.