Outside at Fort Ruigenhoek is a swimming pool. With two swimmers at the edge. Bathing caps and swimming goggles on, ready for the first dip. But the water they jump into is not wet. In fact, the pool is a large ball pit with as many as 25,000 Styrofoam balls. It is already very funny how the swimmers flounder in them. And when they start juggling the balls, they turn out to be super good at it. Dizzyingly fast, the balls fly from one to the other and high into the air. They seem to make the water move. It waves over them and splashes merrily in all directions. Consequently, the puddle of balls outside the pool gets bigger and bigger.
Flemish Batist van Baekel and Finnish Henri Kangas met at the Rotterdam circus school. They found each other in the ambition to create contemporary family performances using old-fashioned circus techniques. In a time when everyone is busy with computers and smartphones, this circus duo lets young and old experience how fine you can play with stuff, and with how much creativity you can do that. In their previous show, Batist and Henri juggled all kinds of children’s toys. In Splash, they live out their imagination on a visit to the swimming pool. This makes for absurd situations, physical slapstick, wildly clever juggling, and delightfully silly clowning antics. And swimmers turning into ballerinas.