Trànsits

Antonia Solano began her career in the circus world in Málaga, her hometown, and continued it in Barcelona. She is self-taught in the art of antipodism and the creator of La Querida Compañía. She is currently part of the Truca Circus Company.

The Decúbit project takes the word antipodism as its starting point, from which the idea of the opposite emerges as a driving force for research. It focuses on working with the trinka and how its use affects the body and the stage, exploring new relationships between technique, object, and stage perspective.

Ginés Belchi Gabarrón is a floor acrobat and, since the age of 15, has been in love with the body and its possibilities. He works with the language of acrodance, physical theatre, and experimental dance. He trained at the Centre de les Arts del Circ Rogelio Rivel and at Ésacto’Lido in Toulouse. He is co-founder of the company El lado oscuro de las flores and has taken part in various projects in Catalonia, such as the Combinat de Circ and the Circ d’Hivern at Ateneu Popular 9Barris. He has also worked with different companies in France.

He is currently developing the research project Con placer querida / Complacer qué herida, an exploration through the acrobatic body, physical theatre, and object manipulation —scissors—. Different fragilities, states, and ways of approaching the object raise questions about how the way we relate to ourselves can be more or less dangerous, and how this can affect us in different ways.

Linked to the performing arts for more than fifteen years, she has developed a multifaceted career as a stage creator, circus artist, set designer, costume designer, and performer. Her artistic practice brings together three main languages: circus, stage space design, and documentary theatre.

In the field of circus, she worked for five years at Berlin’s Volksbühne, directed by René Pollesch, in the production Kill Your Darlings!. In recent years she has collaborated with the documentary theatre company Mos Maiorum, taking part in the creation of Mos Maiorum, Gentry, Turba, and Solar, directing the latter, which was nominated for the 2024 Max Awards in the category of Breakthrough Authorship.

In parallel, she has designed the scenography for several productions on the national and international stage (Marta Pazos, Israel Solà, Jordi Oriol, Atresbandes, Common Ground, among others). She currently directs and co-coordinates the Master’s Degree in Stage Spaces and Art Direction at BAU, University Center of Arts and Design in Barcelona.

Körperbildung is a project born from the intersection of circus and documentary, and it starts from a central question: how does the passage of time affect circus artists? The proposal invites reflection on how this bodily heritage is built over the years and how the relationship with one’s own body evolves as time goes by.

To address these questions, two lines of research are developed. On the one hand, testimonial work; on the other, stage-based research with three aerial artists from different generations: Pili Serrat, Cèlia Marcé Oller, and Nicole Taranenko.

An intergenerational mosaic that brings past, present, and future into dialogue.

Circus artists Tona Punsola and Jordi Puigoriol, from La Bel·Bel Company, and dancer and choreographer Jordi Cortés, from Liant la Troca Company, come together to carry out the community-based stage creation project Boxa, Cells and Other Stories, which involves the participation of a group of twelve people from the Joia Foundation.

Through circus and dance, the project works with memories, recollections, and fragments: intimate and shared stories that appear, disappear, and are recomposed, like cells in constant transformation. A process of collective research in which the body becomes a living archive. Memory is the red thread that runs through the creation: what is inscribed in the body, what persists, what fragments and is rewritten. Boxa, Cells and Other Stories highlights collective creation as a space for encounter, listening, and expression.

Cherry Matakila is a company formed by Barbara (Argentina) and Simona (Switzerland), who met during their training at Ésacto’lido (2021–2024). Three years of sharing intimate and challenging moments brought them together, and little by little they felt the desire to create together. Bleu et rouge is their first creation.

The creation starts from a limitation: what happens when you place a cyr wheel in a 2×3 space? And what happens to the rest of the elements of the space and to the characters that inhabit it? Barbara and Simona embark on this first project together: a playful exploration with circus and absurd humor as protagonists, reflecting on the limits of time and space.

Kolektivo Konika is a circus-theater company established between Italy and Spain, composed of Candela, Elisa, Greta, Naikel, and Michela. In 2018, they came together to share their passion for hand-to-hand acrobatics and make this project a reality, initially based between the Basque Country and Catalonia. In March 2021, they premiered La punta del meu nas, a show that has been awarded both in Italy at “Trampolino Vetrina 2022” and in Spain with the “Festival Territori Violeta 2022” Award. In 2024, it will be the final year of the tour for La punta del meu nas, which has had over 80 performances since its premiere, and the beginning of their second production: Matrimonio.

The current work reflects on the coexistence between traditions and modernity today. It does so through a very old ritual: marriage. Matrimonio is a comedy disguised as a tragedy, disguised as a ceremony, disguised as circus. A look at the black-and-white nature of this ancient and universal institution through circus techniques: acrobatic doors, cyr wheel, balancing, and humor. A street performance where the language is physical, acrobatic, and absurd.

OLGA_cirqAnalogique is a Uruguayan-Catalan company based in Barcelona, formed by Cata Aguayo and Alejandro Dutra. The artists founded the company in 2018 after training at Le Lido – The National Circus Arts School of Toulouse. At OLGA, circus, dance, and music converge to create a hybrid and sensitive language. Their driving force is to transform personal experiences into universal symbols. As migrant and queer people, they understand the stage as a space for representation, resistance, and possibility.

In Utopia for a Ruined Landscape, their second show, they reflect on the end that awaits us as humanity. The end is revealed, and with it, the possibility to live it as we wish. Everything we know crumbles, and with it, our cages. We choose to build a space in which to reconcile with who we are; a present where, even if just for an instant, freedom is possible. Utopia for a Ruined Landscape constructs ways of receiving the end: circus as a poetic, relational, and performative ally; objects as metaphors and music as landscape. The last song, with its last dance.

Anna Pascual and Wanja Kahlert are two artists and co-founders of the company Psirc. Since its creation in 2011, the company has developed several performances, exploring and defining its own circus language. In addition to performing on stage, they have taken on other roles within the creative process of other projects. The core of their work is their love for beauty, humor, mystery, and art as a way to intuit a reality beyond the human scale. Rolando San Martín is a multidisciplinary artist dedicated to the direction and dramaturgy of performing arts projects. His close relationship with Psirc began with the creation of El meu nom és Hor and continues with the performance saga Després de tot. His work as a director and dramaturg is linked to creation and processes that generate language, exploring the friction between different artistic and intellectual disciplines.

In their current project, La casa intempèria, two acrobatic door artists, globally known in contemporary circus, experience an earthquake during the performance. They find themselves stranded, without a show, without a house, without a home. After assessing the pain from the wounds received, both physical and emotional, the disaster’s health authorities mandate the use of clowns to heal. Both characters become aware of their existential failure: they realize they are absurdly trapped inside a space with invisible walls. Desperate, they seek a way to escape this glass cage. In the open air of this abyssal interior, two clowns try, with 2,000 tent poles, to build a house to save themselves.

Maria Solà (1981, Catalonia) creates disjunctive work to denounce the dysfunctions of the system. She is connected to the Catalan and Danish underground, producing festivals, performances, exhibitions, and publications in defense of counterculture. Regarding the performing arts, she is an interpreter and producer. She co-founded Las Feas (2002-2006) and The Brunette Bros (2008-2020). Since 2023, she has performed solo with Mama Calypso and Fets Reals. In the visual arts, she is a researcher and photographer. She carries out publications, exhibitions, and short films.

Her current project, Nacionalidad española: trampas, evidencias y fotos prohibidas, is a critique of police protocols, identity boundaries, the veracity of photography, and control systems. It is also an ode to drag and a testimony to the flexibility of gender expression. It is an evidence, a daring act, and a conquest. A cross-disciplinary research between visual and performative arts that she has carried out over more than two decades, marking her artistic identity specialized in clowning.

Victoria Sickness is a multidisciplinary artist whose career combines technique, creation, and scenic research. She trained in circus arts at the Centre de les Arts del Circ Rogelio Rivel and in Image and Sound Engineering. Since 2017, she has been the lead vocalist and tenor saxophonist of the band Las Marikarmen. In parallel, she leads her own company, Cia. Victoria Sickness, which is currently developing a scenic research project on the travesti body in circus.

Her artistic practice explores the limits of movement, gender, and queer expression, connecting disciplines and creating dialogues with audiences from an experimental and avant-garde perspective.

In the project Algunis no tenim l’opció de no posar el cos, the artist proposes a scenic research process that starts from a quote by Roberta Marrero: “Some people cannot afford the luxury of not putting their bodies on the line.” She explores how a travesti body inhabits risk, fragility, and humor through a combination of scenic languages that challenge hate-driven discourses. The process is complemented by archival research on travesti figures in the performing arts in Spain, generating an open dialogue with all audiences as well as with public space.

The company founded by Clara Poch and Marçal Calvet was born in 2008 and has developed its own language combining circus, theatre, dance, and live music. Their creations —Merci Bien, Amigoo, Flou Papagayo and Lady Panda— have been presented in numerous countries and festivals such as Fira Tàrrega, Trapezi Reus, Fira Mediterrània de Manresa, Umore Azoka, Fira de Circ de la Bisbal d’Empordà, La Strada (Austria), Vivacité (Belgium), and Chalon dans la Rue (France), among others. Their work is characterized by the integration of live music, visual poetry, and a humanistic approach to the body and risk.

Currently, they are in the process of creating L’Ombra de la Libèl·lula, a contemporary circus and visual poetry piece that explores fragility, memory, and the transformation of the body. After an injury forced a redefinition of stage presence, the company builds an intimate universe where light, sound, and movement interact to reveal the beauty of change—a symbolic journey toward the light that emerges from the shadow.