Guanajuato will host a free outdoor Mexican-French circus spectacle this weekend as Cervantino Festival approaches

Acrobats and tightrope walkers will turn Guanajuato’s historic city center into an open-air circus Saturday night, performing high above the crowd in a free opening-day show at the 54th International Cervantino Festival.

“Vértigo” — a Mexico-France collaboration adapted from the French production “Vertige” — is scheduled for 9 p.m. Saturday in Plaza Allende, the small square beside the Cervantes Theater in the historic city of Guanajuato.

The 60-minute show will combine aerial circus, dance, live music and a site-specific visual design. 

The spectacle will bring together artists from Chaillot, a Paris-based national theater, and Mexican performers. Some of the acrobats and aerial balance artists (aka highliners) are affiliated with Mexico City’s Cirko de Mente.

Created by choreographer Rachid Ouramdane, musician Christophe Chassol and highliner Nathan Paulin, “Vértigo” adapts a piece first staged last year at the Grand Palais inaugural festival in Paris.

It was conceived as a mobile work, with performers suspended high above a public space and moving along tensioned lines. 

The Guanajuato version was developed with Andrea Peláez, co-founder of the Mexico City contemporary-circus company Cirko de Mente, and Mexican artists.

France is the festival’s guest country this year, as part of a program marking 200 years of diplomatic relations with Mexico. The initiative recently yielded an exchange of centuries-old Aztec documents known as codices.

France’s program will include 18 presentations spanning classical and contemporary music, theater, dance, cabaret, street art, film, opera and multidisciplinary work.

The aerial circus is free, but overall, the Cervantino Festival mixes ticketed events with free events and free-access areas. It will run from Saturday, Oct. 3 through Sunday, Oct. 18.

Featuring more than 200 performances by some 2,750 artists, the event will include headliners such as Mike Patton’s Italian-song project Mondo Cane, which will open the festival at 7 p.m. Saturday.

The lineup also includes Australia’s Bangarra Dance Theatre, the German contemporary-music ensemble Ensemble Modern, Colombian salsa band Grupo Niche and Austria’s Camerata Salzburg with Spanish violinist María Dueñas.

One highlight will be an Oct. 15 tribute to the late José Alfredo Jiménez, the Guanajuato-born ranchera songwriter who wrote enduring Mexican standards including “El Rey” and “Si nos dejan.” Tenor Arturo Chacón Cruz and Mexico City-based Mariachi Gama 1000 will perform at the event at the Alhóndiga de Granaditas esplanade.

For more information, visit the festival’s official website.