FANCY FRENCH FLYERS.

FANCY FRENCH FLYERS LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL LES COLPORTEURS DAMROSCH PARK TENT NEW YORK, NEW YORK JULY 11-22, 2000

What's a circus without trained animals, jugglers or clowns? The answer is "a lot" if it's one of the new French circuses. Les Colporteurs (meaning peddlers who carry their goods on their backs), directed by Antoine Rigot and Laszlo Hudi, presented an enchanted evening of wordless vignettes using dance, objects, music, trapeze and ingenious teamwork. Loosely based on Italo Calvino's story "The Baron in the Trees" about a boy who runs away from society to live in the tree tops, Filao features a set of vertical branches forked at the top, sometimes attached to the floor. At one point, a dancer traveling through with swinging hair, long dress and jutting body reminded me of Martha Graham's Embattled Garden, with Noguchi's set of abstracted trees.

But Filao (a pun on the French for high wire) is a far cry from the austere drama of early modern dance. The sense of play and whimsy delights the audience, and each character in this motley crew grows more colorful as the hour progresses. An elderly gentleman walks around as though to offer cigarettes but instead pops a flaming bit of something into his mouth. A "strong man" catches, under his chin and in his armpits, clear balls that roll down troughs held by the forked tree branches. Musicians, including Carl Schlosser (composer), Antonin Leymarie and Franck Jaccard, play from every corner of the tent.

The one dancer, Kathleen Reynolds, stars in a ravishing section that begins with her draped in white, as though in a morgue. In a surreal twist, now wrapped tightly in the white sheet, she becomes the main fare at a banquet. The group's rhythmic miming as they prepare to "dine" is hilarious. Eventually they set her swinging, and she emerges from her cocoon in a white dress rather than the red dress she wore going under. Flying low, she sweeps the faces of two men with her hair as she twists and twirls, entrancing them and confounding them.

Each section is associated with a poem written by one of the performers, and although you probably won't read the poem till afterward, the elusive quality of poetry is in the air. Also in the air, at different times, is a hanging saxophone, a cascade of fluttering paper stars, and, of course, the trapeze.

The trapeze artists--Linda Peterson, Sophie Kantorowicz, Xavier Martin and Miguel De La Rocha--swing, whip, somersault and exchange in midair. Their daring and timing can make one giddy, especially in this small one-ring tent, where they soar directly above us. The trapeze action advances from order to chaos, and we can barely catch our breath before the next trick or the next flop onto the long mattress below. The timing and teamwork are superb and witty, but even better is the collective verve that oozes from these performers.

Unfortunately, artistic director Rigot could not appear in his usual role of high wire artist because of an injury. David Dimitri, whose formidable tricks were honed at Cirque du Soleil and Big Apple Circus, replaced him. The most memorable gesture comes at the end, when Dimitri seems to reach for a single source of light in a darkening sky.

Filao is a rare combination of poetry and spectacle.