Among colored ribbons and with an Anglican cross in the background, the French tightrope walker Philippe Petit tried to touch the sky in the most religious sense of the word and walked on a tightrope between two imposing columns of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York , in Upper Manhattan.
The sobriety of this Episcopalian temple served as the backdrop for Petit’s walk, now 74 years old and who achieved world fame in August 1972, when at the age of 24 he walked on a stretched cable and without any protection the space that separated the former Twin Towers, a feat immortalized in the documentary Man on Wire.
In today’s walk, called ‘Divine Paths’, Petit also did not have protection, although the distance that separated him from the ground was, yes, much less impressive than that summer day: at most, between him and the public there were 10 meters – compared to the 400 meters he once observed from the highest point of the Twin Towers – a prudent act due, perhaps, to his age.
But Petit still knows how to move on the rope in a graceful and elegant way, as if it were a light feather swaying by the wind, and on his way he was also accompanied by a classical music orchestra that kept the spectators absorbed, fearing a fall.
Petit walked wrapped in a structure of 1,100 colored strips made by the artist Anne Paterson, through which he made his way thanks to a wooden stick that he held in his hands and that helped him maintain his balance: there were four walks of a column to another, each one faster than the last, and, on his pointe shoes – typical of dancers – the artist seemed to dance in the air.
In a way, the atmosphere generated by the sobriety and silence of the cathedral (emphasized by an audience that could do nothing but hold its breath throughout the show) gave his feat the appearance of a religious experience.
Throughout his show, the Frenchman maintained his playful spirit, which was especially manifested in a moment when, with a funny attitude, he sat at the end of the structure and pretended to eat one of the strips designed by Patterson, and then took out of his endless of them, a performance that can usually be seen in circuses.
There was no lack of tension either, especially when Petit knelt on the rope and seemed to stagger, although he managed to get up without apparent effort and reach the other end, after which the audience breathed a sincere sigh of relief.
At the end of the show, the tightrope walker came down from the structure and embraced Patterson while the spectators rose from their seats and offered him a warm ovation.
Petit’s feat in the Twin Towers
Petit’s fixation on the Twin Towers came in the most unexpected place: a dentist’s office. There, in the waiting room, he read an article in a magazine about the construction of the complex of buildings, which gave him the idea of crossing the space that separated them on a steel cable.
For years, the artist studied the structure of the towers, obsessed with walking between them. That day in August, when he was only 24 years old, he managed to climb to the roof without being seen, placed the rope and made his walk, during which he sat, danced and bowed to the New Yorkers who watched him in disbelief.
The feat of that day inspired the documentary ‘Man on Wire’ – which won the Oscar for best long documentary in 2009 – and the film ‘The Walk’. and it caught the attention of the then reverend of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, who proposed Petit be a resident artist of the church, a title that he maintains to this day and that has led him to do other shows inside.
Laura Bosley, executive director of the cathedral program, assured EFE that, for the church, Petit is like “an adopted son”: “He likes to give his time, his talent and his light to share the church with the world. ”.
For his part, the reverend of the cathedral, Patrick Malloy, was grateful that Petit’s walk attracted hundreds of spectators to the church, who at the end of the show toured its interior with curiosity: “There are people who come to places like “These people don’t look for God but they end up finding him,” Malloy told EFE.
In addition to his walk between the Twin Towers, Petit has also used other structures such as the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris or the Sydney Harbor Bridge to carry out his dangerous tightrope walks. With EFE
