It may be hotting up outside, but snow is predicted in Abu Dhabi this weekend.
Slava’s Snowshow, which has entertained more than three million people in 30 countries worldwide, is at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre from Thursday until Saturday, offering a mix of traditional and contemporary theatrical clowning that culminates in the creation of a winter snowstorm inside the hall.
Chaplin all the way
The Olivier Award-winning theatrical production is the brainchild of the 64-year-old Russian artist Slava Polunin, hailed by The Times in London as “the best clown in the world” for his onstage persona Asisyai, whom he’s been playing for more than 30 years.
Unlike most circus clowns, Asisyai is a thoughtful and poetic character, inspired by Polunin’s childhood hero, Charlie Chaplin. It was watching Chaplin’s film The Kid when he was 7 years old that made Polunin decide he wanted to be a clown. The next day, he went to school with his father’s boots, hat and cane, and made his friends laugh for the entire day.
Despite his comedic talents, Polunin was refused entry to the Leningrad Theatre Institute due to his pronunciation. He soon became fascinated by the way movement could convey emotion and performed on state television throughout the 1970s and 1980s, using his wordless routines to mock the authorities without falling foul of censorship rules. In 1982, Polunin organised a mime parade in Leningrad in which more than 800 semi-underground mime artists from the Soviet Union took part, which was unheard of at the time.
Living in a fairy tale
Polunin now lives in a quirky house outside Paris, with walls to walk through, a flower bed to sleep in, a river that flows backwards, horses with pink wings and a capsized ship’s canteen. This is where Polunin’s imagination runs wild to create his surreal projects.
In 1993, he formed the Academy of Fools to resurrect carnival culture. “It gave me an excellent opportunity to gather my friends together and have fun,” he says. “People are so focused on their careers, problems and incomes that they no longer feel the taste of life. They’ve forgotten what it feels like to smell a flower, to listen to a bird’s song, to lay on the grass on a summer’s day staring at the sky for hours … The main purpose of the Academy of Fools is to make sure these pointless things do not disappear from life. If we stop doing those things, we’ll drown in seriousness and lose our ability to smile.”
Let it snow ... in Abu Dhabi
The thought of making it snow in Abu Dhabi makes Polunin smile. “Enough snow is used in each show to warm everybody’s heart and make them want to stand and scream with joy,” he says.
Polunin is joined on the tour by his all-Russian cast of clowns and by his family, which includes his “wife, two sons, one stepdaughter and two granddaughters – no secretaries, no marketing manager, no CEO, no stocks, no office, no ties, no meeting rooms, no retirement plan and no paid holidays.”
Slava’s Snowshow is at Adnec at 3pm and 7.30pm on April 17 and 18, and at 11am and 3pm on April 19. Tickets cost from Dh170 at www.platinumlist.ae. Recommended for children aged over 8