Piñata Cake (2025) - Gaël Santisteva

An unusual, visual, musical and physical performance inspired by circus, Piñata Cake plays with our expectations and our thirst for astonishment. At first invisible, the scenography and protagonists gradually reveal themselves in ways that are sometimes intimate, spectacular, or absurd.

Who operates in this theatrical space? Who are the real actors in this hallucinatory landscape? Does it even matter to define them?

Like a dance between the hidden and the revealed, the performers engage in revealing attempts through entresorts. They converse, build pyramids, sing, and sometimes fall silent, leading the audience into a fantastical and reflective landscape.

In a playful and anarchic manner, they explore questions related to our social relationships, our constructions, and what we choose to let appear in society.

Piñata Cake premiered from 4 to 8 March, 2025 in Atelier 210 (Brussels, BE).

After TALK SHOW (2017), Garcimore est mort (2021) and Voie, Voix, Vois (with Saaber Bachir and Antoine Leroy, 2023), Piñata Cake is Gaël Santisteva’s fourth project. In 2026, Gaël will develop the research project Smoothie Songs (and Teen Screams).

Piñata Cake - A project by Gaël Santisteva (65’, 2025)

Creation and performance: Gaël Santisteva, Micha Goldberg, Jonas Chéreau, Vivi Focquet, Maya Dhondt
Artistic advices: Lara Barsacq
Dramaturgical advices: Sarah Vanhee
Sound and musical composition: Maya Dhondt
Light design: Emma Laroche-Brassié
Costumes design: Sofie Durnez
Stage design: Sofie Durnez, Gaël Santisteva
Sound: Fred Miclet, Lucie Bourdon
Administration & Production: Mélanie Jourdan, Myriam Chekhemani (La chouette diffusion)
Communication & Distribution: Quentin Legrand (Rue Branly)
Production: Gilbert & Stock
Coproduction : Atelier 210, Charleroi danse - Centre Chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Théâtre national Wallonie-Bruxelles, UP - Circus & Performing Arts
Residencies: Charleroi danse, Grand Studio, Kunstenwerkplaats, Studio Thor, Arts Center Buda, Latitude 50 – Pôle des arts du cirque et de la rue
With the support of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles

Photos : Stanislav Dobak

 

UPCOMING

  • 24.03.2026 | UP Festival, Bruxelles (BE)

PREVIOUS DATES

  • 04.03.2025 | Atelier 210, Bruxelles (BE) - PREMIERE

  • 05.03.2025 | Atelier 210, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 06.03.2025 | Atelier 210, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 07.03.2025 | Atelier 210, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 08.03.2025 | Atelier 210, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 03.07.2025 | Festival de la Cité, Lausanne (CH) - Swiss premiere

  • 04.07.2025 | Festival de la Cité, Lausanne (CH)

  • 26.11.2025 | Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles x Charleroi danse, La Raffinerie, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 27.11.2025 | Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles x Charleroi danse, La Raffinerie, Bruxelles (BE)

  • 28.11.2025 | Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles x Charleroi danse, La Raffinerie, Bruxelles (BE)

[ Review ] “Piñata Cake keeps the audience in suspense with promises it deliberately fails to deliver on. Gaël Santisteva does not show spectacle, but our hunger for it, and how much we rely on the expectation of a revelation that may never come. (…) Piñata Cake is a reflection on our constant urge for something new, for the big reveal. The performance also rattles the high expectations that surround art as a “message” today. Santisteva sabotages that expectation machine, so that we realise that we always want to see something “resolved” immediately and how badly we cope when that doesn't happen. (…) We live in a time of reveals, unboxing and instant gratification, of videos that always have to show ‘something’. Santisteva and his companions turn that dominant logic on its head. They show an empty piñata that, contrary to expectations, contains no sweets. The whole thing is almost spectacle, almost emotion, almost magic. But it is precisely in that “almost” that they show how dependent we have become on that promise itself.”
Jasper Delva, pzazz Theater, 26.11.25