The city of the acrobats

Thus -"la city of the acrobats" - Marguerite Yourcenar to Bangkok described, where to each step she encountered, in the corners, the seats, the markets and until on board of the boats that furrowed the channels, with volatineros, jugglers, tragafuegos, contorsionists, dancers. If the illustrious writer revived and visited Buenos Aires today, she could well apply the same qualification to him.

As well as in the column of the last week we recognized in the living statues the quality of actors - of a very special sort, but actors to the aim -, today we extend the concept to saltimbanquis that unexpectedly they arise in the crossings of the great Buenosairean avenues and execute his you romp in tries of an aid of the motorists. Jugglers who play with you nail and balls of colors, acrobats which they jump and they jump, ocurrentes, manipulating clowns of ignited torches… It has of everything, and at an amazing speed, because they must take advantage of the minimum pause the traffic lights to make its number and to pass the cap, almost at the same time.

They are very young people, boys and girls, in its majority - they say theater students to me (of clown, techniques of circus and comedy of the art, disciplines added from not long ago to the traditional ones in the formation of actors), of dance, physical education. Already incorporated to the urban landscape, its singular activity is, without a doubt, fruit of the crisis. Bitter affluent fruit, since the devilish transit and the abundant irresponsibility of some conductors risk their lives when facing.

But, who resist to the affection, the grace and the skill whereupon these comedians - not only of legua but of asphalt they give back for a moment to the city the ancient image of juglares? At some moment of the evolution the man separated from to his prime brother the chimpanzee (of that separates only a gene to us), but did not leave the taste by you romp them, the dance, the mímica, the corporal expression, in aim. In Athens, in Rome, in the great large cities of the antiquity, even those of East (we remember one and thousand histories "nights"), and mainly, in the European Average Age, juglar or the titiritero ("the altarpiece of Maese Pedro") he proposed a form of street theater that repelled immediately in the town, with applause and contributions in food and shelter. Also there was trifulcas, if the minions of a powerful one perceived some critic to the gentleman and beat or jailed to the artist, or if this one did not respond to the expectations created by the preparation of its shed. In which case the spectators sent everything to him what they found by hand.

The nostalgic ones of those times supposedly golden - the Century of Spanish Gold, the time of Shakespeare- in which the scene, even improvised in the vestibule or in the seat, united to the community in the shared fervor by an art expression that spoke in a language included/understood by all, can recover today, in the middle of trajín Buenosairean, an imitation of those fates.

Far from the street aggressiveness whereupon other personages they are sent to clean - to their way the windshields, or to introduce by the window of the taxi piles of notebooks or anotadores, the acrobats put a note colorful, of color and - we repeated it of grace, in the gray uniform of the Buenosairean center. They offer an art form to the step and hope of us, watching surprised, a compensation, that cannot be but minimum, of its eagerness.