French whimsy

Some think of Slava Polunin as a modern-day Mad Hatter. Others see him as an avant-garde performance artist, or even the world’s supreme clown. So what is a man who grew up in the Soviet Union, doing here on the Marne River in France?

Influenced by master-mime Charlie Chaplin as a child, he graduated from the Leningrad Institute for Soviet Culture and became a clown in the early 80s. His first gig was with a mime parade in St. Petersburg, where he joined more than 800 mime artists from the Soviet Union. This sort of public entertainment was unheard of at that time of strict Communist control of all artistic events. Although it parodied Communist restrictions on artistic events, there were no specific rules about mimes.

It also helped that he was able to make the Soviet leader's wife laugh!

His clowning antics took him far from circuses - to Broadway where he won the Lawrence Olivier Award in 1998 for his highly successful tour, Snowshow.

Now happily living in France, Slava has turned his love of fun into something that the public may also enjoy. Since 2010, Slava and his family and colleagues may be found at his Dali-meets-Disney wonderland.

Visit, and you will be entranced by five kaleidoscopic gardens, book trees, walls to walk through, flower beds to sleep in, a giant egg house for…chickens, a river that flows backwards, galaxies and giants living in trees, keys to nowhere, fairy tale bedrooms, a gypsy caravan paradise, a capsized ship café, floating singing moons, horses with pink wings and a temple brought from Korea by Buddhist monks. And more....

For opening hours and ticket prices......

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