“Making Sure of Your Own Whispers”, Collectif Petit Travers
Jeremy Malies at the Festival de Almada, Portugal
11 July 2025
I had already noticed in my own life that jugglers and drummers make good goalkeepers. It doesn’t take much thought to understand the commonality. Julien Clément of Lyon-based Collectif Petit Travers goes beyond notions of pure dexterity to suggest that his juggling resembles drumming due to commonality of pulse. Clément almost fuses at times with drummer Pierre Pollet during this two-man show which sent the odd gasp up and down the steeply raked seating at Escola D. António da Costa.
Photo credit: Geraldine Aresteanu.
The title of the piece comes from a poem by French Resistance fighter and rugby player René Char. Whispering is suggested frequently through the wire brush work that characterizes Pollet’s drumming.
The show starts with Pollet beating four-four time on Clément’s back, and the point is presumably that percussion was our first attempt at communication. There will no doubt be treatises on this by Noam Chomsky and other double-domed academics. Juggler echoes drummer at times here by making his movement resemble that of a metronome.
Pollet strikes, scrapes and even shakes his collection of percussion instruments. The pair blend totally when Clément’s juggling balls become the wheels of a train while Pollet’s instruments suggest steam engine noises. Pollet extends beyond percussion to xylophone and what I took to be a mini pedal steel guitar. There is no obvious narrative and not a word is spoken. Clément is at his most playful when manipulating enormous staves and occasionally pretending to intimidate Pollet with these.
Clément alternates between bouncy rubber balls and juggler’s sponge balls which sometimes have a weight or bias or even an element of stickiness. It would have been lost on nobody that Pollet’s main set of drumsticks have tips resembling the balls that Clément is using. At times the movement of the balls left residual images on my retina and traced firework-like patterns.
Staying with soccer, the aspect that was breathtaking for me was Clément’s inverted keepie-uppie as he patted a ball up and down with the soles of both feet while occasionally doing Johan Cruyff turns around an imaginary opponent. At other times, as he comes to the end of a juggling routine, Clément strikes balletic poses and goes on pointe with a flourish that nobody would begrudge him. He brought one routine to a close with mesmeric whirling and generally was as playful as a dolphin.
This was a brisk 55 minutes as we were propelled by beats that varied but never truly subsided. Pollet’s brush work became almost subliminal and merged with the smallest movements among the audience. He was at his most endearing when conducting a mock drum battle with himself.
The message of this show, I believe, is that rhythm suffuses every aspect of our lives. The project (directed by Nicolas Mathis) is in no way mannered and is perhaps the purest and most candid show at the Festival de Almada that will speak to the widest demographic. It encourages us to embrace and explore rhythm while helping us to understand it.
