Author: studio8jo

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Circa Contemporary Circus is one of the world’s leading performance companies. 

Since 2004, from their base in Brisbane, Australia, they have toured the world – performing in 40 countries to over a million people. Their works have been greeted with standing ovations, rave reviews and sold-out houses across six continents.

Circa is at the forefront of the new wave of contemporary Australian circus – pioneering how extreme physicality can create powerful and moving performances. They continue to push the boundaries of the art form, blurring the lines between movement, dance, theatre and circus, and leading the way with a diverse range of thrilling creations that ‘redraw the limits to which circus can aspire” (The Age).

Under the direction of circus visionary Yaron Lifschitz, Circa features an ensemble of exceptional, multi-skilled circus artists.  They are a regular fixture at leading festivals and venues in New York, London, Berlin and Montreal with seasons at Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Barbican Centre, Les Nuits de Fourvière, Chamäleon Theatre as well as major Australian Festivals.

Circa dares to create a physical score for the towering masterpiece of the symphonic repertoire – Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

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In this first-time collaboration between the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Circa, ten world-class circus artists under the direction of Yaron Lifschitz will present Beethoven’s music in its physical form – with emotionally-charged choreography intricately woven to reflect the score. Extreme skill and dramatic acrobatics play out in this grand celebration of humanity, where the lines between movement, music, dance and theatrics are blurred and boundaries are pushed.

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Three artists stretch the boundaries of contemporary circus in this intimate and deeply moving new production by Brisbane-based contemporary circus company Circa. 
 
Hauntingly beautiful and truly virtuosic, What Will Have Been is a sublime display of interlocking bodies, awe-inspiring movement and pure physical beauty. Circa’s intrepid artists will challenge your perceptions of what is possible within the human body and draw you deep into a world of physical daring.
 
Accompanied on stage by a live violinist and fusing together the music of Bach and spine-tingling electronica, this explosive new production is guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings and have you on the edge of your seat.

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Straight from the score and onto the stage, the man known as Mozart appears amid a storm of powder, tumbling and twirling, as musical mayhem and movement fuse in this family show with a circus twist.

To those who know him, he is Wolfgang, the dart-playing, pun-loving ratbag. To those who are watching and listening, he is the wigged genius Mozart. Come and discover his irrepressible spirit and vibrant compositions through physical comedy and mischievous antics.

Designed to amaze people from the age of three and upwards, Wolfgang’s Magical Musical Circus reinvents the composer’s magical music in a skilful and illuminating show featuring Circa’s dexterous daredevil artists and an accordionist. Watch as the notes are physically lifted off the page as performers bring the renowned compositions to life amidst a storm of powder, tumbles and crashes, all under the eccentric swirl of the conductor’s baton.

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Circa’s internationally-renowned ensemble joins with a local cast of circus performers, dancers and young people for a world premiere circus event.

The art of circus is taken in an exciting new direction as 36 performers hang from a grid suspended in the air and propel themselves across the stage, tumbling, balancing and soaring together. The dramatic power and extreme skill of Circa’s trademark acrobatics thrillingly expose the tension between the mass and the individual in this epic theatrical event that is at once deeply moving and physically stunning.

In these complex times, Leviathan offers hope by celebrating what can be achieved when we work together. This action-packed show connects the local with the global and the emerging with the visionary and genuinely pushes boundaries in a powerful new circus production.

https://circa.org.au/about-circa/

https://vimeo.com/circapresents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaron_Lifschitz

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The “Biennale Internationale des Arts du Cirque” is the largest contemporary circus festival in the world and is held in the south of France every two years.

The Biennale is organised by the Archaos circus company and the first edition in 2015 attracted 60 circus companies from around the world and had more than 85,000 visitors.

The Biennale itself was born out of the Circus in Capitals project that Archaos managed as part of Marseille-Provence 2013, the European Capital of Culture festivities. 

The success of the circus arts during the Marseille Provence 2013 inspired the Archaos company to create the first Biennale Internationale des Arts du Cirque in 2015.

2015 teaser

2017 teaser

2019 teaser

https://www.biennale-cirque.com/en/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biennale_Internationale_des_Arts_du_Cirque

Part of the project Attraction

Johann Le Guillerm has remarked: “I don’t make new shows, I continue them…” Secret, the vision of a life, reflects this process, fusing continuity, transformation and movement.

Johann Le Guillerm, acrobat, juggler, creator and manipulator of objects, is one of the most unusual figures on the contemporary circus scene. Drawing on the arts and sciences, he doggedly pursues his search for a 360° view of the world. Alone in the ring or in his “laboratory”, he explores and materialises his observations in strange machines, testimony to or expressions of the relationship between man and matter.

Two years after creating the company Cirque ici and when he was only 27 years old, Le Guillerm won the 1996 National Grand Prize for Circus, an award that crowned his career in the arts up till then. In 2001 he undertook a huge multifaceted project, Attraction, which is first and foremost the manifesto of a creator who makes invisible knowledge visible. This “mental circus” signals a utopia, with an all-encompassing eye that scrutinises everything around us, while our modern gaze has for decades been happy to take in only what’s right in front of us. A 360°vision, as imposed by the ring, the circus.

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The universe is his playground; the ring the laboratory where he experiments with new laws to create some order in the tumult of the world and to shake up the supposed evidence.

Here, Le Guillerm is at one with matter, he tames atmospheric turbulences, he provokes unstable balances and plays with the elements. He is Don Quixote when he rides strange machines, part-spider, part-snail, and launches an attack on unfathomable challenges.

He is then Sisyphus, obstinately building giant mikados that he destroys without any qualms the moment their stability ensured.

There is also a bit of mystery in this show, a bit of of poetry, a bit of intuition, a bit of experience. Some fury, too. A secret that (re)creates itself year after year to draw a map of a placeless planet with sensitive perspectives and infinite utopias. A new landscape appears, show after show, familiar but imperceptibly reconfigured with each production.

http://www.johannleguillerm.com/en/

3D | Cie H.M.G.

An unusual journey into the land of balance and sound.

A human-sized wooden arch stretched by a metal wire: it is a strange rocker invented by the circassian Jonathan Guichard. In a tumble movement, perilous or gentle, the acrobat embarks on a journey as close as possible to the spectators. He explores all the directions and dimensions inspired by this disproportionate instrument, which becomes an extension of himself.

A playful relationship to space, matter and sounds is established, because this circus is also a sound object: we can hear an amazing music created live by this moving body. Its frictions, crackles and percussion on the floor fill the space. The funny and prodigious oscillations open the doors of the imagination.

https://www.facebook.com/CieHMG/

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Racine(s) by L’Attraction

Premiered 2019

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Racine(s) results from the visual, physical and poetical research of circus artist Inbal Ben Haim, who is also a nomad, traveller and nature lover.

In constant motion, most of the time in the air, she questions the concept of integration.
In a duet with singer and musician David Amar, they propose a visual and musical poem of a raw and organic purity which reflects each human being’s vital issues: the Earth, roots, travel and identity.

Golgota

Golgota is a very male production (the Virgin Mary is notably absent), with Bartabas joined on stage by flamenco dancer Andrés Marín, three sombre white-ruffed musicians (straight from El Greco), a dwarf, four horses and a donkey.

There’s no clear enactment of the Easter story, although the work is dense with images: priests, Roman soldiers, crucifixes, candles and incense, and comes with the piercing, live accompaniment of a selection of sacred motets by Tomás Luis de Victoria. As Bartabas has said, he and Marín are like boys “locked in a church”, who play with the materials around them.

Bartabas himself is a shamanistic presence, often robed or veiled, and his command of his animals has a magical intensity as he moves them through graceful circles, an elegant rising trot, or falls with them to the floor, in a slow-motion pietá. The stage is shadowy, and apart from the music the only sustained noise is made by Marín – dancing a brief zapateado solo, drumming with his hands, or performing the final extraordinary crucifixion scene, in which his feet (clad in hooves) violently stamp out Christ’s final agony. The work is hot, strange and compelling, but the finest moments are those where Marín dances with Bartabas and his horses, where he mimics their footwork and communicates with them through a language of nuzzles, glances and breaths. It’s surely in this ancient, wordless connection between man and beast that Golgota finds its true religion.

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Who is Bartabas?

Famous for his use of horses as a means of artistic expression, Bartabas is a world-renowned rider, director and stage designer. His company, Zingaro Equestrian Theatre has performed all over the world for over 25 years but these special performances mark Bartabas’ first appearance in London.

Loungta

In 2003, le Théâtre équestre Zingaro presented Loungta – Les Chevaux de Vent at the Festival d’Avignon.

For twenty years, Bartabas, who leads the Théâtre Equestre Zingaro (Equestrian Theatre), has roamed around the world seeking inspiration in music, pursuing his essential quest for the pure gesture wherein human beings and animals reconcile spirit and body as the profane and the sacred in utmost simplicity.

Bartabas prefers ritual to spectacle. Each new musical encounter is a source of movement for this master. Algerian Berber music for the Opéra Equestre, the sonority of Rajasthan for Chimère, South Korean chants for Éclipse, contemporary partitions for Triptyk…

In August 2002, Bartabas returned to the East and spent a few days in a Tantric monastery in Gyuto, located in a former Tibetan province in the far north-east of India. There he watched as disciples sought their individual accomplishment on Buddha’s path, and was inspired by their rhythm, discipline and rigour which then helped him produce the images and the choreography for his new performance, Loungta, The Horses of the Wind.

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The riders, dancers and musicians are reunited in the ring. Ten Tibetan monks aged between twenty to seventy, diffuse the deep tone of their “buffalo voices”. On their traditional instruments, they play partitions which are indissociable from their daily religious practices.

They agreed to leave their monastery to share three years of the daily life of the company. About thirty horses, twenty riders and dancers are clad in costumes inspired by certain ancestral rituals and their faces are the angry masks of the gods and goddesses of death. Bartabas returned from the jungle and the areas around the Himalayas with the desire to bring about a certain state of being among his horses and his riders, to attain the precision/aptness of an increasingly elementary beauty.

Bartabas, while moving even further from the frivolity and frenzy of the contemporary West, re-asserts his philosophy, exalting ancient oriental values. He goes in search of the essence of beings, human or equine in a bid to bring them closer together and to celebrate them.

CIRCa Fesival

Initiated by members of the Jeune Chambre Economique (Economic Chamber of young business people), the CIRCA Festival was created in 1988.

In 2015, CIRCa created buzz by hosting the last Zingaro show as well as the well known Cirque Plume which then celebrated then its 30th anniversary. Since 2015, every year, the CIRC receives an average of 100 artistic teams, either artists in residence or shows programmed during the Season or during the Festival of Contemporary Circus.

http://www.festival-circa.auch.fr/

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Cloud Gate Dance Theater is a modern dance group based in Taiwan, the first of its kind in Taiwan and Asia. It was founded by choreographer Lin Hwai-min in 1973,[3] and later he shared its management with his late protégé, Lo Man-fei, a renowned choreographer in her own right.

Cloud Gate created numerous dances that evoked the unique experience of Taiwan people within the larger Chinese and Asian context. Known for its extensive international tours, Cloud Gate has performed in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America. The company also spends much of its time performing throughout Taiwan, and is generally acknowledged as the country’s premier dance organization.

The organization has two branches other than its main dance company. One, called “Cloud Gate 2”, tours communities and works with and helps develop young dancers and choreographers. It was founded in 1999. The other, Cloud Gate Dance School was founded in 1998 with a view to making dance education more broadly available.

13 Tongues

PREMIERE: 2016

As Lin Hwai-Min, founder of the world-renowned Taiwanese company, steps down in 2020, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre brings works from the current and new artistic directors. Lin’s Dust uses Dmitri Shostakovich’s response to the destruction of Dresden to form his own requiem for this century. Dancers struggle through smoke and dirt until they are swallowed up in the darkness. Cheng Tsung-Lung grew up selling slippers on the side of the road. For 13 Tongues, Cloud Gate’s new artistic director merges his memories of the sights, sounds and vitality of Bangka, Taipei’s oldest district, with the fantastical tales of the storyteller Thirteen Tongues.

Wind Shadow

PREMIERE: 2009

Part of Dance Umbrella 2009. Choreographic master Lin Hwai-Min has created a contemporary dance work that makes shadows come alive. Joining forces with leading Chinese visual artist Cai Guo-Qiang, WIND SHADOW is a study of motion created through monochromatic palettes and the use of light and shadow. Set to a haunting soundscape, the dancers capture the intangible quality of the wind and the variable structure of shadows. Projections of Cais gunpowder drawings merge into silhouettes and form a moving art installation within which the dancers engage with their independent shadows.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate_Dance_Theatre

https://www.youtube.com/user/cloudgatedance

https://www.cloudgate.org.tw/en/cloud-gate-theater.html

https://www.cie111.com/en/

Aurélien Bory, artist, director and scenographer. He lives in Toulouse and works internationally. He is the artistic director of Compagnie 111.

• 2000 : IJK
• 2003 : Plan B Aurélien Bory / Phil Soltanoff
• 2004  : Taoub, with Le Groupe acrobatique de Tanger- Maroc
• 2005  : More or less infinity , Aurélien Bory / Phil Soltanoff
• 2007  : The Seven Boards of Cunning, with artists from the Dalian Opera – China
• 2008  : Questcequetudeviens? for Stéphanie Fuster.
• 2009  : Not applicable
• 2011  : Rubber geometry
• 2012  : Plexus for Kaori Ito.
• 2013  : Azimut, with the Tangier-Morocco acrobatic group
• 2016  : Species
• 2018: aSH for Shantala Shivalingappa

Aurélien Bory collaborates with the charismatic Indian dancer, Shantala Shivalingappa in this exquisite solo infused with poetry and spirituality. Embodying the majestic figure of Shiva, Shivalingappa dances on a blanket of ash, a symbol of the cycle of life, her pure and sensual movements forming mandalas beneath her feet. Tracing her journey from her ancestral Indian dance, Kuchipudi, to the contemporary dance that has earned her international recognition, aSH is a remarkable fusion of Western and Asian cultures, a miracle of poetry in motion.

https://www.cie111.com/en/spectacles/ash

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Along with his Compagnie 111, Aurélien Bory has gained a reputation as a poet of space and a wizard of staging; an artist capable of blending elements of dance, music, magic and circus in his visual theatre.

Created from the comparison with Species of Space – Espèces d’espace by Georges Perec, Espæce (note the overlapping of the two terms that make up the title of the book) is therefore the natural continuation of this artistic path.

With acrobat Guilhem Benoit, dancer Mathieu Desseigne Ravel, contortionist Katell Le Brenn, opera singer Claire Lafilliatre and actor Olivier Martin Salvan, Bory has composed a real tribute to the French writer – who was orphaned at a tender age following the death of his father in war and his mother’s deportation to Auschwitz – in a jigsaw puzzle of faded memories, allusions, voids and absences.

If the theatrical scene is used here to replace the paper pages that make up the famous text, then the hyperbolic language games of Perec are returned through the manipulation of all of its mathematical tools. A new vision machine capable of creating irony, emotion and wonder, or a poetic journey through the many landscapes of our existence.

https://www.cie111.com/en/spectacles/espaece

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Freely based on the figure of Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa

Moroccan acrobats are called “the children of Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa”. He was an eminent 16th century Sufi thinker, whose grave has become a pilgrimage shrine.  He is regarded as the Patron Saint of Moroccan acrobatics. Initially, these acrobatics performances are not considered as being a part of the performing arts; they are closely related to Soufism, they emerged from ancient Berber ritual practices and they consist of circular and pyramidal stunts, in which I perceive both celestial and maternal representations.

In Sufism, an ontological quest, the concept of the path is essential. Azimut (Azimuth in English) derives from the Arabic As-samt (Sumūt in the plural), meaning “the paths”. Azimut is the term used in astronomy to describe the angle between the observer and the celestial bodies. With this meaning, the sky is summoned.
In the legend of Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa, when the wise man reached the heavens, he looked back at Earth and men, and settled upon going back. Among others, his path led me to embrace the return motif as the core of the writing.

https://www.cie111.com/en/spectacles/azimut/

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This show was born out of Aurélien Bory’s desire to go to China to meet artists in the town of Dalian, who are the most technically accomplished in the world. He wanted to work with them to compose a contemporary visual tale inspired by a game which dates back to Chinese antiquity: the tangram, or in Chinese “qi qiao ban”, which means “the seven boards of cunning”. This is a solitaire game, based seven geometrical elements: five triangles of three different sizes, a square and a parallelogram, which must be assembled to form one large square. The game’s components are manœuvred by sixteen people who stand them up, climb on them, get into them, following their changing forms, slip into a hollow cube, construct improbable and ephemeral edifices.

https://www.cie111.com/en/spectacles/les-sept-planches-de-la-ruse/

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Watch video: https://www.numeridanse.tv/en/dance-videotheque/taoub

Performed by a group of twelve acrobats from Tangiers, Taoub (fabric in Arabic) aims at remaining close to the art of weaving. The show crosses the threads between circus, theatre and video with fabric as its sole decor, mobile and transformable. This fabric is in turn: floor, cloth, blanket, tent or clothing, the main accessory and the sole partner of the actors, a recipient of light, a projector and a screen but also a propulsion tool for the acrobats. All the possibilities between the fabric and the acrobat are presented to build a luminous and spectacular fresco. A genuine human fabric, Taoub explores the relationships of solidarity and competition and questions the resources of social or family fabric. Aurélien Bory, the director of the magnificent Plan B, builds a world from scratch or nearly and adds an artistic and poetic dimension to the spectacular nature of acrobatics.

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“I asked myself: What was the first robot? And I found that the first was the industrial robot, built during the 1960s and then hugely developed during the late 60s and early 70s. This robot, an industrial robot arm with six rotational axes, didn’t really change after that early period of intensive development — in terms of electronics and computing it of course became more complex, but it was the same object: the six-axis arm. And I said, OK this is the first robot, about my age. When I was born, he was there.”

http://sideshow-circusmagazine.com/magazine/deconstructions/aur%C3%A9lien-bory-sans-objet

More:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Compagnie111

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Akram Hossain Khan, is an English dancer and choreographer of Bangladeshi descent. His background is rooted in his classical kathak training and contemporary dance.

“The rules of Khan’s new company were simple: take risks, think big and daring, explore the unfamiliar, avoid compromise and tell stories through dance that are compelling and relevant, with artistic integrity.”

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In August 2000, he launched Akram Khan Company. His first full-length work Kaash, a collaboration with Anish Kapoor and Nitin Sawhney, was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002.

In Kaash, Hindi for ‘if’, the British-Bengali choreographer Akram Khan presents his own vision of Shiva, the god of both destruction and creation. The world-famous artist Anish Kapoor translates this transcendent theme into a poetic stage setting. With his compelling rhythmic structures, the English-Indian composer Nitin Sawhney then creates parallels with Khan’s powerful movement idiom, rooted in the Indian dance form Kathak.

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DESH —- Premier: September 15, 2011

DESH is a new full-length contemporary solo and the most personal work to date from celebrated choreographer and performer, Akram Khan. DESH meaning ‘homeland’ in Bengali, draws multiple tales of land, nation, resistance and convergence into the body and voice of one man trying to find his balance in an unstable world.

Moving between Britain and Bangladesh, Khan weaves threads of memory, experience and myth into a surreal world of surprising connection. At once intimate and epic, DESH explores fragility in the face of natural forces, and celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in the rhythms of labour, in dream and story, and in transformation and survival.

For this production, Khan teams up with Oscar-winning visual artist Tim Yip (Production Designer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), fellow Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist lighting designer Michael Hulls, writer and poet Karthika Nair and Olivier award-winning composer Jocelyn Pook.

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Zero Degrees —- Premier: July 8, 2005

An exciting collaboration between Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi, this is an opportunity to see these remarkable artists working with sculptor Antony Gormley and composer Nitin Sawhney.

Khan and Larbi first met in 2000 when they quickly discovered strong similarities in their work. Both are sons of Islamic families brought up in Europe, and both draw upon this meeting of cultures, combining complex Indian Kathak dance with the speed and precision of contemporary movements.

zero degrees was borne out of their longing to create work together, and follows them on a journey to seek the reference point, the source, the ‘0’ at life’s core. Inspired by their own dual identities, the two search for this middle point through polar opposites; becoming/death, light/dark, chaos/order.

Creating the environment for this journey is artist Antony Gormley, most famous for his ‘Angel of the North’ sculpture. Working closely with the two dancers, his design will reflect the concept of duality explored in zero degrees. Specially commissioned music is by composer/producer Nitin Sawnhey. This is a rare chance to see four of today’s greatest artists join forces.

VERTICAL ROAD —- Premiere: 16 September 2010

In Vertical Road Khan has assembled a cast of very special performers from across Asia, Europe and the Middle East. With a specially commissioned score by long-term collaborator composer, Nitin Sawhney, Vertical Road draws inspiration from the Sufi tradition and the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi. Exploring man’s earthly nature, his rituals and the consequences of human actions, Vertical Road becomes a meditation on the journey from gravity to grace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akram_Khan_(dancer)

https://vimeo.com/user5239431

https://www.youtube.com/user/akramkhancompany

https://www.akramkhancompany.net/