- Title: Seeing double: hundreds of twins gather for festival in France
- Date: 15th August 2019
- Summary: VARIOUS OF FRENCH REALITY TV STARS THE PHOENIX TWINS PERFORMING ON STAGE
- Embargoed: 29th August 2019 16:53
- Keywords: twin festival France multiplets twins triplets quadruplets multiple births
- Location: PLEUCADEUC, FRANCE
- City: PLEUCADEUC, FRANCE
- Country: France
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment
- Reuters ID: LVA006ASBXX09
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: It's a festival times two on Thursday (August 15) in a town in Brittany, where around 1,500 twins, triplets and quadruplets of all ages gathered to share anecdotes, enjoy music and play games, as they don identical outfits.
The municipality of Pleucadeuc, in northwestern France, has been hosting the annual twin festival since 1994, attracting participants from around France and other countries.
Alain Launay, the mayor of Pleucadeuc, founded the festival in honour of his twin daughters Cecile and Aurelie.
"I noticed from early on, and my wife too, that twins like meeting other twins. They have a special sort of language, they understand each other straight away," Launay said.
Twins shared stories of their special bond, and situations that suggested a sixth sense between them.
"On our birthday, we decided to make a puzzle. I wanted to buy her a puzzle with a photo from our holiday last year, and she ended up giving me the same puzzle with the same photo, without having talked about it," 25-year-old Charlotte said, about her and her twin, Carole.
The festival has also been a venue for matchmaking - twins Julien and Fabrice, 49, are married to twins who they met at the same event 20 years ago.
This year, the town treated guests to a parade, meet and greet sessions, musical performances, games, and a disco - organised by over 400 volunteers from the Pleucadeuc's Twins and More Association.
The star performers of the festival are the Phoenix Twins, a duo of singing twins who featured on the reality TV singing show The Voice France.
Around 12,458 twin births, 167 triplet births and 8 quadruplet briths were recorded in France in 2017, comprising more than 17% of total births, an INSEE study found.
In the U.S., twin birth rate increased by 76 per cent from 1980 to 2009, according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The rise is widely attributed to the increasing popularity of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), which can result in twin births due to the implanting of multiple embryos in the womb.
(Production: Udi Kivity, Michaela Cabrera, Kathryn Carlson) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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