Wintervonken; Winter Sparks

I think this versatile performer was the 

baritone previously entertaining us

from the earth-bound stage!

As I suggested, I investigated Wintervonken with Edmond who was staying briefly last weekend and we arrived in the Burg to find a huge crowd milling around despite the damp, cold weather. I don’t remember what I expected but it was certainly not the serious delight of romantic solos and duets from befrilled and becostumed excellent classical singers on the small outdoor stage. From her heart-shaped red parasol to the tips of her red-stockinged and red-booted feet, the soprano was every inch the Romantic Heroine. Her consort too was dressed chiefly in white to complement her white crinoline, but with touches of red on his white top hat and tails. The many, many children in the audience seemed bewitched but more was to come. More, indeed, to enchant the adults too.

I had noticed a long, long slender crane at one end of the Burg, and soundlessly and unnoticed at first, it, the crane, moved slowly into action providing the power for a gorgeous aerial ballet to begin above our heads. Just before, several red and white crinolined girls had pirouetted, weaving through the audience, mounted somehow on tiny platforms powered by bicycles to which each individual girl’s stage was mysteriously joined. The entire concept was so disconnected from an everyday way of doing things, that the audience seemed entirely happy captives, happy to believe in, and become lost in, everything it was witnessing. But when the aerial ballet began, time really stood still with children and adults alike gazing in wonder at the pirouetting performances so high in the sky. Magical was the word. I think the children in

particular will not forget the spinning ballet on a level with the bare treetops in the Burg and the scattering of tiny pieces of tinsel and white feathers by the duvet-full over the expectant faces below.

Theater Tol, the magicians involved, were spectacular in both performance and concept.

 Close-up of the fiery blooms around

Les Amoureux

As we left in search of warmth, on another stage beneath the trees, four rather fierce-looking men were tuning up to what might well have been full-on Heavy Metal while the bar was doing brisk business. The range and quality of the free entertainment during the year, available to the citizens of Brugge plus the tourists, continue to amaze and impress me. But the red and white pied aerial roundabout with its smiling, posing, trapeze performers who appeared to enjoy it all, takes, if not the biscuit, certainly the waffle!

I quite forgot to describe how fantastic the Burg-beneath-the-trees looked with many artfully-arranged small fires and a huge cauldron of flames with wooden benches and chairs provided for the lucky few; a fiery winter terrace indeed provided by De Vuurmeesters. I should add too that the Burg itself, with its beautiful building and gilded statues provided a majestic setting in which to stage a special event.