People like eccentrics. Polunin likes intelligent people.

He has been entertaining audiences for several decades, never lowering himself to rely on vulgar jokes or cheap tricks. Enriching his audiences with human emotions has been his main concern, rather than crowd-pleasing.

Marcel Marceau said that a magician makes the visible invisible, while for a mime it is the other way around.

RIANovosti / Vladimir Vyatkin

Once he is on stage, you never know what to expect from Polunin – trust him, and he will take you to the gems of happiness and wit.

One of his artistic objectives, among others, is to create an authentic aura of celebration and happiness, which he says is key to the creative process.

Wherever he performs – London, Paris, Tokyo, New York or Moscow – Polunin’s experience and intuition guide him through the labyrinths of psychology and nature or humor.

Who else can you think of, as the founder of the so-called “Ship of Fools” except for Polunin?

He created his International Center of Theatre Arts “Ship of Fools” in Moscow back in 2002.

Since then the ship, headed by the “obsessed captain Polunin”, has been searching for the “less explored isles of performing arts that are extreme in their fantasy” – clowning, street and visual theatres, contemporary circus, cabaret and carnivals.

Large-scale celebrations of Polunin’s 60th anniversary will take place in Paris in July, and in August and September in St. Petersburg and Moscow where he is set to revive his trademark “Caravan of Peace” traveling theatre festival.

Valeria Paikova, RT