Cirko – Center for New Circus organises for the first time a new mini-festival called What the Cirk? which takes place on 15th to 19th of November in Helsinki, Finland. The festival presents three fresh contemporary circus pieces. The three performances float on the borders of different performing arts, aiming to question previously accepted categories.
The mini-festival will host a premiere of Sivuhenkilöt (Sidekicks) performance by Lehmuskallio & working group. The piece uses elements of contemporary circus and theatre to explore what it feels like to touch and to have to go without being touched. Sivuhenkilöt (Sidekicks) takes the audience to unexpected situations: meeting a lady who is missing a limb and a man who has lost his face, dining with a misbehaving grandmother and dangling upside-down from a bedhead. The performance combines text with physicality and visual elements and has been created by a team of theatre, dance and circus professionals. The performance will take place at Tenaille von Fersen banquet hall, a former 18th century granary and one of the historic venues, located on Helsinki’s idyllic Suomenlinna island.
Another new Finnish production is Salla Hakanpää’s Dive. Hakanpää is an aerial acrobat whose previous solo piece was the awarded and visually stunning Pinta (Surface). The performance is created especially for swimming halls and it offer rope acrobatics above and under the water plunging time to times into another reality. The work produced by WHS which is a visual theatre / contemporary circus company from Finland. The piece is directed by Ville Walo.
Festival’s guest performance is Swedish Svalbard Company with their work All Genius All Idiot. The performance revels in the absurdities of life, using extreme circus artistry to highlight human behaviour at its most animalistic. Svalbard bends the edges of contemporary circus and blends it with theatre, physical comedy and live music to create a truly original piece that you will remember for its surreal quality as well as its awe-inspiring acrobatic skills. The performances at London International Mime Festival and a month run at Adelaide Fringe were sold out. ‘All Genius All Idiot’ was awarded ”best circus and physical theatre” at the Adelaide Fringe weekly awards in 2016.
The curtain between theatre and contemporary circus festival will be cracked open as well while Cirko – Centre for New Circus togehter with Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival invite their audience to celebrate together at the Love me in November Club at Cirko. The coming together of two festivals aims at cross-pollination, cross-experiencing and dialogues between both artists and the public.
Cirko – Center for New Circus is a house for contemporary circus; performances, residencies and a festival.
(Source: Cirko – Center for New Circus 17.10.2016)