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Update: I’ve posted a lot about Royal de Luxe and it’s influence since this post. Click here to go to search links to all those posts.

Update 2015 – removed and struck out some broken links

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I’m blown away by the French street theatre company Royal de Luxe’s amazing street parade, ‘The Visit of the Sultan of India Atop His Time-Travelling Elephant’, which took place in Nantes last week, in honour of the centenary of Jules Verne’s death. A rocket landed just outside the cathedral in place Saint Pierre, and from it a young giantess emerged. Together with the Sultan’s huge 11 metre tall elephant with a house built into its back, she explored the streets of Nantes, taking time to eat an icecream, ride a scooter, take a shower and nap, be lifted up onto the elephant’s trunk, and eventually to return to take off in her rocket again.

I’ve been collecting links! If you are short on time go to the ones with asterisks. (edited Oct 2014 to remove defunct del-icio.us link).

2007:

• The Sultan’s Elephant in Santiago, South America, late January, with a rhinoceros.
• The Sultan’s Elephant in Reykjavik, Iceland 10 – 12 May, with the little giantess’s father. Here is a great close up of his face.
• Les Machines de l’île de Nantes
• Some influences of Royal de Luxe, including a giant boy in Korea, dog puppet in Barcelona, giant girl in Chile, stencil art and photographs

2006:

• Le Grand Géant in the water at Pont Du Gard, August (by krisyid) (added 29 Sept 2006)
• The Giraffes in Le Harve, September (by jeffreyhill) (added 29 Sept 2006)
• Machines of Spectacle at Le Grand Repertoire in Paris (by Tekrotzen) (added 29 Sept 2006)
• Le Grand Repertoire photo pool at Flickr (added 29 Sept 2006)
• The producers who brought The Sultan’s Elephant
  to London in June this year are bringing out a book of photos,
  reminiscences and articles about the event which will be published in
  November 2006. (added 29 Sept 2006)

The Sultan’s Elephant in Antwerp (added 8 July 2006)

• Official Anterp site (via)
• Flickr photo pool for the Sultan’s Elephant in Antwerp

The Sultan’s Elephant in London (added 21 Apr 2006)

• The Sultan’s Elephant
• Artichoke (company bringing TSE to London)
• BBC coverage, including webcams of various locations (added 2 May 2006)
• BBC photo gallery – you can send in your photos (added 2 May 2006)
• Short interview with promoter Helen Marriage in The Guardian
• About the London promotion
• Flickr group photo pool: The Sultan’s Elephant in London (added 5 May 2006)
• Wonderful video footage of the elephant by Mike
• At Boing Boing
• BBC video: the event begins
• BBC TV news video early on. Poor quality.
• Simon Crubellier’s exellent gallery*
• Sean McManus’s photos
• a gorgeous little movie of edited sequences put to music*

2005:

Nantes official site (in French):

• sequence of events

Other photo galleries:

• Ian Flanigan: fabulous photos, video clips and commentary; technical gallery and commentary (very cool)*
• Nantes: actualite,archetecture, photo
• Agora Forum
• Winona
• Guillaume Gautier
• Assblaster: elephant in transit at night
• Christophe Routhieau(added 19 June 2005)
• EpiTaF (added 19 June 2005)
• La Prise.org: part 1 (added 19 June 2005); part 2 – details of the elephant (23 June); part 3 – this has cool video clips! (9 Nov) (thanks darth!)*
• Raphael
• Emmanuel Bourgeau: carving and construction photos take link from ‘la gazette de l’atelier’ page (link updated July 2007)*

At Flickr:

• Winona
• Guillaume Gautier
• Samuel Besnard
• jujufrodo1 – I love this one

Blog entries:

• dirty beloved: great links about the company; thanks Ajax! I’ve included most but not all of them here
• jzw:1, 2 (include accounts by Ian Flanigan)*

Amiens:

• Eric Pouhier’s photo gallery (including some of the puppeteers/manipulators) added 19 June)
• Renaud’s Gallery (added 23 June 2005) – cool!
• Ch_P at Flickr (added 23 June 2005)
• 2005 Amiens photo gallery

About Royal de Luxe:About Royal de Luxe (French sites):

• VTi: A Short Introduction
• Royal de Luxe – not an official site, but pretty comprehensive – history, links to photos and reviews (thanks for the image above)* (updated link 2 June 2006)
• Royal de Luxe
• French Wikipedia entry
• 1995-2002 – Karen Maldonado
• Interview with Jean-Luc Courcoult, director (in Spanish)
• Interview with Jean-Luc Courcoult, dirctor (pdf in English)
• BBC Royal de Luxe photo gallery, from older productions (added 6 May 2006)

Royal de luxe at Wikipedia (added July 2007)

Machines of Spectacle

• Machines of Spectacle exhibition

‘Hunters of the Giraffes’ photo galleries:

• Le Fourneau*
• Guy Yoyotte-Husson et HC

‘The Giant’

• Photo gallery
• The small black giant (single image, added 19 June)
• single image by Jordi Bover

Catamini Attraction

• Hugues Allart’s gallery

Poster

• Royal de Luxe poster for sale (image on the right)

Tour dates:

2005:

• Nantes (France) – 22, 23, 24, 25 May. Debut.
• Amiens (France) – 16, 17, 18, 19 June
• La Havre – mid July (didn’t happen as far as I know)
• London (UK) – 8, 9, 10, 11 September. (I think this did not happen because of the London bombings)

2006: (only London confirmed as far as I know)

• London (UK) – 5, 6, 7, 8 May. See here for official website coverage.
• Antwerp (Belgium) – 6, 7, 8, 9 July
• Calais (France) – 28, 29, 30 Sept & 1 Oct
• La Havre (France) – 26, 27, 28, 29 Oct
• Paris, Bilbao, Marseilles, Valance possible