More of this article: • All Together Now! Part I

Boxing Day, La-Chaux-de-Fonds. We've travelled through a miles-long, who-knows-how-deep tunnel up into the Jura Mountains to get to La-Chaux-de-Fonds, watchmaking city & former home of Trotsky & Lenin. Bikini Test, the club about which Whitman McGowan wrote “Swiss Reggae Dub,” is on the outskirts of town, a square building with a typically Swiss A-frame tile roof, its exterior walls covered with outsize Zap Comix-style characters, some of the ugliest cartoon art I've ever seen. The interior is cave-like on the lower floor, with a box office that looks like a spaceship cockpit molded of freeform concrete, and barn-like upstairs, where the space beneath the rafters has been filled with weird papier-mache figures that could be either angels or demons, robo-mechanic sculptures & other installations casting shadows on the ceiling.

La-Chaux-de-Fonds is the home town of A-Poetik, an Italian Swiss trio of Louka (dj & programmer), Maximiliano (vocalist -- he doesn't so much sing as speak or chant the texts of their pieces) & Nicola (guitarist, also known as DJ Nixx). Whitman is the only Cirque performer explicitly designated “poet,” but A-Poetik's performances are clearly poetry, spoken rather than sung words, the concatenation, reiteration & subtle interaction of the words as crucial to each piece as the musical elements. It turns out they have appropriated & reworked the text of Whitman's “Cash Cult” -- it has morphed from a brilliantly preached piece of audience participation irony into a darkly atmospheric meditation on money chanted to a jungle beat.

Bob Log's soundman Danny is bummed because it's their last night with the circus, he has hopes of adding a performance of his own into the mix -- & things are just starting to gel. People are collaborating, new recipes are cooking in the kitchen of the tour. Danny says to Whitman, after unsuccessfully trying to enlist the Last Torridas to back him up in his karaoke act, “What we need is the guy who can improvise his own kind of music & take it to the limit no matter what else is going on around him -- no matter if he's singing off-key -- and YOU are that man!” Whitman's response: “You want me to chill out the whole scene? You want me to be the Mentholator?!” Maybe Danny has planted a seed. . . .

Meanwhile, Jean Philippe, the Dead Brother, has begun to pace backstage with his tuba during the shows, quietly working out accompaniments to add to the other performers' pieces. By the end of the week, he has performed with every other act in the Cirque. Axel, the firefly drummer from Tulip, has joined the Dead Brothers, whose performance is much enhanced by percussion. Tulip has asked Whitman to tiptoe on stage during their minutes of mirror-silence & do a poem. And Whitman has begun to do his punk song about personal hygiene (“Ready To Get Dirty Again,” to the tune of “Anarchy in the UK”) with the help of the Dead Brothers (2 tubas, 1 rhythm guitar) -- they are the world's first oom-pah-pah punk band.

December 29, Berne. The Reithalle, an alternative arts center founded 20 years ago by squatters in an abandoned factory complex near the railroad tracks, now houses several theaters, a couple of cafes & various nightclubs all supported with government money. At the towering gate that gives entry into its castle-like central courtyard, a solemn-faced young woman hands me a sheet of paper, German (which I can't read) & below that a translation into pitiable French, something about feminists standing together against the intimidation & harassment of the groups of young men that gather under the overpasses near the Reithalle. It seems appropriate in a place like this, communally founded & managed, to respond to a social problem by rousing community action. Later, as we are driving out of town, Alain Croubalian points out the gypsy-style caravan community where Kat, the Reithalle's sound engineer, lives.

When we find the enormous drafty hall in which the circus will perform tonight, it is filled with the aroma of yet another home-cooked meal for the performers, vegetarian curry & a real green salad. In Switzerland we have vastly increased our intake of alcohol, cheese, meat, chocolate & secondhand smoke, but it's inspiring & comforting to be greeted with such delicious hospitality at every venue. We Americans are basking in the respect & warmth so naturally accorded to traveling performers here.

December 30, Delemont. Tonight we are in a real castle in the Jura Mountains, overlooking the town where separatist sentiment resulted in the formation of a new Swiss canton only 20-odd years ago. One wing of the castle is used as a school & its windows have been made into a giant stained-glass Advent calendar. The other wing encompasses a newly-renovated gymnasium where most of the Cirque performers will sleep on mattresses laid out around the edges of the enormous floor, & at the other end of the building a warren of adjoining small rooms that serve as the club SAS.

The Cirque is manifesting ever more cohesion & collaboration. Tonight Whitman steps on stage at the end of A-Poetik's set & they back his reading of two long poems. There has been no rehearsal, no planning beyond a couple of sentences to say “the mood of this one is sexy & extreme, this one is dreamy” -- but the interaction is magical, totally on, a seamless blend of voice, dj & guitar creating something much bigger than the sum of the parts.

Holger, the Tulip singer, has a bad cold & has lost his voice, so the Dead Brothers' singer Alain Croubalian & several of the Last Torridas now join him onstage each night to sing his part -- having heard his alternating falsetto melodies & growling bass for so many consecutive shows, they know the songs & he is grateful for the friendly help. Still, those who have to sleep in the same room complain of his snoring & he has given the cold to everyone.

New Year's Eve, Zurich. We have arrived at RoteFabrik (“Red Factory”) for the last show of the Cirque. Like the Reithalle, it is a vast arts center, a former industrial facility taken over by young people 20 years ago. Despite its now long-established history & government funding, RoteFabrik keeps its edge in programming, in appearance, in the look of the people behind the scenes & in the audiences.

Le Cirque Electrique has become a real circus. In a week we've fallen into an every-day-the-same routine -- sleep late, get down to last night's club by 1 pm to load the van & all pile in for the afternoon drive to the next location, arrive at the new club by sunset to spend a couple of hours setting up, experimenting with each other's pieces, munching on the buffet that always awaits us, do the show all night, 10 or 11 pm until 3 or 4 or even 6 am, the acts in different orders & combinations each night, then sleep until it's time to do it all over again. In that week we have evolved a net of relationships, a history together. We have told our stories, listened to each other's performances again & again, discovered our affinities & dislikes, played with each other, carried each other's equipment, sung each other's songs.

Tonight our Swiss artist friends, Daniel Hauser & Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza, show up backstage with bunches of tulips. At the end of each set, the other Cirque performers bring tulips & kisses to the performers on stage to say farewell & happy new year. They have decided that Whitman should have the biggest Tulip of all -- during his set they carry Holger in his tulip costume onto the stage & put him in Whitman's lap, where he mugs & blushes while Whitman completes the performance. The circus performers are unabashedly singing along with each other tonight & this often prompts the audience to join in, so the show becomes a party. It's a fitting end to an amazing week.

Margery Snyder

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