Trànsits

Timothée Meiffren, a member of Collectif TBTF, is originally from Toulouse, where he developed a deep sensitivity to the visual arts, especially painting and sculpture, as well as an interest in exploring improvised music. Later, he discovered circus arts and trained as an acrobat at Esacto’Lido before entering the Fratellini Academy in Saint-Denis and the Circus School of Lyon. His acrobatic practice led him to explore choreographic language, so he continued his dance training in the Coline program in Istres. Since then, he has worked on merging these disciplines, driven by a passion for risk and a special affinity for falling.

‘La peur des vides’

Currently, Timothée is developing La peur des vides, a solo clown show with a red nose that combines live music, burlesque acrobatics, and puppetry. This 50-minute show is inspired by fantastical worlds and addresses themes such as strangeness and absurdity, welcoming others, our intimate relationship with productivity, and the fear of the voids it can create.

Marina Cherry, based in Stockholm, is a contortionist-acro-dancer, educated at ESAC (Brussels 2016-2019) and ENC (Montreal 2014-2016) she is now working on her solo show ‘Only Bones v.1.6’ as well as collaborative projects around Europe, including companies Les Argonauts and Petri Dish and Cirkus Cirkör. Her research-based approach to creation and performing puts her somewhere between dance, contemporary circus and physical theatre; with her body as the tool of manipulation and method for redefining traditional constructs and deconstructing techniques to find her own language.

‘AVoid’ is an anonymous space. An unusual body. A desultory corruption seeking reprieve. A pursuit of one’s fantasies, fears, and neuroses. Without a need for resolution or justification, AVoid is the astringent potentiality of the “in-between”: neither here nor there. The project is an attempt to touch on realities that belong to the indiscernible, the ineffable, those that are a reminder of the dissipation of certainties.

This project is born from Marina’s fascination with solitude, contradictions, alienation and the impact of rapidly developing—devolving—society in the face of digitalization. The common point being the concept hikikomori—the withdrawal into seclusion, a particular condition in Japanese society where people avoid social contact to an extreme level. Shutting oneself in.

The Charge Maximal de Rupture company (CMR) was born within the 31st CNAC 2019 promotion, composed by Fernando Arévalo, Marica Marinoni, Pablo Pe.ailillo, Héctor Díaz and Ma.l Thierry. They begin their journey under the wing of Galapiat Cirque, and then look for their own creative colours and their own ways of conceiving the collectivity.

Winners of the circus commission of the Beaumarchais-SACD Association in 2021, the company begins to consolidate itself with the parallel creation and distribution of Quiproquo (creation 2021) by Hector and Ma’l; and 9.8 by Pablo and Manuel (creation 2022).

This company is based on its plurality, thus carrying different creative projects at the same time, each developed by at least one of the members of CMR in collaboration with other artists to establish creative collectives. The collective gathered around the QUIMERA project is composed of Pablo Penailillo, Nicol·s Palma and Cristóbal Espoz, and this is the team involved in the creations with the aerial tapes.

QUIMERA

QUIMERA is a circus project that addresses the close bond that exists between the concept of “attachment” and that of “belonging”. Considered for the hall, in front format adaptable to the circular, it is performed by three circus artists united around the same apparatus: aerial straps.

 The center of our project is our relationship to this object and how this common bond expresses the relationship between us. The starting point of QUIMERA is the essential condition (and also the constraint) of straps: the attachment. This apparatus has the principle of connecting a body to ceiling, and the fact of being attached to this object suggests a fusion between the acrobat and the object, which thus become a single entity. 

The aim is to develop and divert this principle to discover how it is applicable to a group. Anchor yourself into the sky, to earth, to others, and become together one single creature. We start from the desire to make a journey together, that goes from three individuals to one creature, from personality to entity, from individuality to collectiveness.

Starting with us, three people that develop their personalities and relationship between them, until transform into a one single whole.This is an evolving journey that goes from a single unitary organism which grows, develops, adapts, separates and dismembers until it comes back into three individuals, into three beings humans. We dive into collective thinking, like that of a pack, of a flock of fish or birds, and in a thought of unity, like that of a cell or an organ. We therefore switch from the development of our humanity and individuality into a form of a united organism, and then come back transformed in the process. Then a question is posed: what to do now with this humanity? The idea is to take this question as a springboard to share our questions about this that defines us as people: our experiences, traumas, dreams and frustrations, and above all the relationship that exists between the three of us

Clara Prieto Boix starts her professional training at the Rogelio Rivel Circus School in Barcelona, and next to Codarts, University of Arts of Roterdam (Holland), where she specializes in rope. She also discovered the pole.

She has performed at various festivals in Catalonia, Belgium, Lithuania, Mexico… And she has participated in projects such as the Combinat de Circ from the Ateneu Popular 9 Barris, C%RC at the Antic Teatre in Barcelona, Balade de Cirque from Companie BAM, Nilak Circ Teatre Itinerant, among others. She’s interested in the social part of the circus and she has taken her to participate as a volunteer in projects in the southeast of Turkey and Tunis.

Her idea is to create a fluid and natural language, quality she is looking for through dance and movement. Her last discovering has been the tap, which together with dance, theater, humor and absurdity, are resources to achieve a more complete and diverse language.

‘Bennescuda’

Dice que en el manicomio, un día, el director coge a tres locos para ver si les puede dar de alta. / Dice: veniu aquí. / Se acercan los tres. / I li diu amb un, li diu: ¡a ver tú! 6×6? Y dice el tío: ¡Febrero! / Diu: vale nen, de puta mare. / Diu: tú, al segon, tú: 6×6? Diu: 1000! / Diu: molt bé! Deu ni do també. / Li diu al tercero: a ver tú!, ¿6×6? Y el tío: ¡36! / Diu, coi, diu: y ¿cómo has llegado a esta conclusión? / I diu: ¡fácil! He dividido febrero por mil.

Marc Bosch Mola (Vic, 1992) studies biology and neuroscience, while forming in circus. Later, with the aim of professionalizing as an artist, he studied at the Rogelio Rivel school in Barcelona. He performs in various pieces, such as ‘Gender’, under the direction of Tere Celis, and in the 58th Combinat de Circ of the Ateneu Popular de Nou Barris, under the direction of the Cia. Zero en Conducta. He also participates in various circus galas with his fixed trapezium show at the Mercateatre 2022, at the Cronopis Circ de Nadal 2023 and at the Gala Mara Mara in 2024.

In the attempt to continue expanding, he began to work with Andreas Avgousti (Nicosia, 1992), a gender researcher and queer philosophy. With this cross-contamination, between the physical practice of the circus and the queer philosophical discourse, the project ‘Escorça’ is born.

Escorça

Wrapped in a warrior’s armor, like a hard and heavy shell, I conceal an unknown part of myself.
Can’t you sense it when you embrace me? My hooked fingers tear at the protective remnants of wood, like an hourglass, revealing fragments of what’s beneath.
Slow and steady.
To uncover each piece and see others for who they truly are; will you really see me? Today, I could strip bare like a winter tree.
I wonder, is there more to me beyond this shell, or is bark all I am?
I wonder, do I have anything in common with you, or am I a monstrous creature?
Escorça materializes into a circus piece for two people, an interpreter and a technician; a puppet and a puppeteer. An attempt to (de)construct a circus piece following a learned vital recipe, where the discourse on human essence becomes the guiding thread. A tragicomic experience that speaks through layers, inviting the audience to self-reflection.

“Escorça” is an attempt to (de)construct a circus piece following a learned life recipe, where the discourse on human essence becomes the guiding thread. A tragicomic experience, speaking through our layers, inviting the audience to self-reflection.

Photo: Aina Barril

Borja Nou graduated in Social Education and is a Sociocultural Animation Technician. He also trained at the school of social theatre and performance La Roda in Madrid. As a circus artist, he trained at the Escuela Internacional de Circo y Teatro CAU in Granada, where he specializes in hand-to-hand discipline, as a base and flyer. Currently, he is in the process of creating two projects: ‘Requiem’, with the QIIMERA collective, and ‘Nébula Dermis, a solo show.

‘Nébula Dermis’

Nébula Dermis is a multidisciplinary piece of solo circus-mediation in which circus language, physical theatre and the will of the public are put into dialogue. It is a condemnation of the declaration of vulnerabilities, crossed by dissident identity. A popular sentence is proposed in which the apparent centre of condemnation is the artist, who, without being aware of it, also puts the public to trial with the blames attributed to them. A journey through the fragilities of the scenic body and the collective self-reference that is born from the need to share in a vulnerable way and to recognize oneself in it.

Photo: Fede Nieto

In 2022 Maria Paz brought together four circus artists – Jesu, Africa, Júlia and Maya – from France, Catalonia and Chile to create the company La côte folle. The collective is created, on the one hand, with the desire to create an acrobàtics and dance creation and, on the other hand, by the desire to share collective ethics and the question of how we make circus.

Entre bous i vaques

Five acrobatic bodies that are carried and accompanied, use a structure that is transformed to explain ‘Entre bous i vaques’. The collective La côte folle proposes – through the acrobatics and dance – a scenic narrative about memory, forgetfulness, old age, dementia and the passage of time, inspired by real anecdotes and testimonies.
A street proposal and for everyone. A journey between the memories of a ruined brain, between sensitivity and humour.

Photo: Andreu Casadellà Oller

Phonophobia is a company formed by Karita y Maristella, multidisciplinary artists who explore different forms of scenical art such as circus, singing, physical theatre and dance. Currently, they are in the process of creating their second project ‘Fast food emotion’.

Silvia Capell (Catalonia) studies psychology and is trained as a professional circus artist at the La Tarumba school in Lima, Peru. Later he returns to Barcelona where he builds his artistic life and works in different companies and projects, such as Les Capgirades, Colectivo La Persiana, Los Galindos, La Virgueria, Les Impuxibles and Companyia Voël.

In 2015 she created her own company with a solid commitment to contemporary art and with the aim of generating risky art and direct dialogue without anesthesia with the public. After ‘Homenaje’, her first creation, she’s currently in the process of creating ‘Ángela Caído’.

Ángela 

Born in Argentina, she trained there as a circus artist, focusing on aerial acrobatics. She obtained the title of Professor of Body Expression-Dance at the University of Arts of Buenos Aires; complementing her training with other arts of movement. She is professionally dedicated to aerial disciplines and scenography.

She participates as a performer in the ‘DanzAbismal’, a group of dancers dedicated to researching, experimenting and producing performative interventions in non-conventional spaces. She co-founded ‘Companyia Anexo23’ with Meme Canziani. Together, as directors and performers, they created the piece ‘PVC (C2H3Cl)n’, which was presented in various locations in Buenos Aires.

Recently, she has created her company to carry out and deepen her new contemporary circus project, ‘Tension’, which was selected by CircusNext 2024.

Tension

It is the intimate space where discomfort resides. It’s this lift, the staircase, the emergency exit. A body in contact with the object. A hostile object that damages its skin; it becomes skin, flesh; it could be another body, perhaps this body attacking, manipulating, sniffing. Bodies talking about their limits, playing with the abyss: How much pain can we endure? How much tension can we resist? Hold on!

Hold on? It could break at any time. A large latex wall that divides the interior of the exterior. Domination, submission, subjugation. From pleasure to pain and grief to aggression. The exhibition of fragility fighting to feel safe. A party with balloons: the celebration of order and disorder. The jump, the fall. Chaos, what a great chaos! It is freedom to submit!

Photo: Flavia Andolfi

Alexandre Duran Davins (1997, Catalonia), trained in circus at the Rogelio Rivel school in Barcelona, the Lyon Circus School and the ESAC (École Supérieure des Arts du Cirque), where he specializes in pole. It is also trained in theatre, with the Stanislavski method, in martial arts, in dance-theatre and Krump dance. He currently resides in Catalonia and is in the process of creating the piece ‘Insula’.

Insula

It’s a moment, like those moments in life, that are not understood but that appear and cross through us. Even though we are social beings, the reality is that the only thing that belongs to us is ourselves. By choosing solitude, I take control over the only thing I have control of—myself. But it’s not easy.

Maragda Induráin and Maria Estela met and studied at the La Madó Dance School (Vilassar de Mar) from 2015. At the same time, each has been trained in different techniques. Maragda Induráin, contemporary dancer and circus artist, was part of the Cia jove Fre3Bodies 2018, studies at the Rogelio Rivel and dancer at the Cia Roseland Musical. Maria Estela, performer and singer, graduated from the Institut del Teatre, resident at Lo Spazio, research centre and artistic practices, collaborates with national musicians and dancers, and works for the next production of the Teatre Akademia 2024 directed by Moreno Bernardi.

Nowadays they are realizing their first project together, the search of stage poetic between the chinese pole, the voice and the word. We will experiment with possible methodologies based on improvisation and repetition dynamics, in order to enter into what music and movement suggest.

He was born in Friuli, studied graphic design, came to Turin as a juggler but ended up hand in hand. After three years of training at the Flic circus school, he moved to Barcelona, where he improved the hand-to-hand technique and cultivated his artistic side. He has worked on several projects and companies, such as “Viso&Rachel” “Cieocifa” and with the “Fabbrica C” collective.

He currently lives in the fruline mountains where, in Circo all’Incirca, he regularly teaches hand-to-hand classes. He also collaborates as an artist and set designer with the Brocante association and with Roberto Magro. He is also in the process of creating the piece ‘Fragile’.

Fragile

Balance is alive.
A controlled precariousness, where risk suspends us.
And if it falls? doesn’t always matter.

Arrel Guevara studies the degree of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Barcelona while starting to train as a circus artist in different spaces such as Atlantis and Gente Colgada. Later, in 2020, he decided to become an artist at the CAU Circus and Theatre School in Granada, where he specialized in trapezium, and also took a social circus course at the Ateneu Popular 9Barris. Currently, he works as a circus trainer at the Circo Aire and La Volta schools, and continues to train in dance, acrodance, theatre and trapezium. He is in the process of researching and creating his first solo, ‘Lutum’.

‘Lutum’

‘Lutum’ comes out of my ass, but not just from mine; it comes out of the anus as a hole susceptible to violence. ‘Lutum’ is the encircled framework within the body that only needs to be alive to die. It’s the mud entering the veins without asking for permission and taking you to paralysis. It is to tray the bones and organs deposited in a body that is transformable and deciduous. That it is penetrable and impenetrable. Organic and grotesque. Fixed and stroboscopic. Hysteria and white space.

From the most private to the public emergency: sexuality, gender, violence and disease are the elements of the human being that converge in that scenic experience, represented through the body, trapezium, drag and words.

He has had circus, dance, currently two theatre companies; bands, orchestras, dúos and solos. He has been a musician since he has memory, accompanying the creation processes of Losin’Form’Alls, Circ Vermut, Alba Ramió and Ildor Llach, and a string of French companies such as INO Kollektiv. He has worked as a sound technician, light technician, distributed magazines and stacked powdered detergent packages on a pallet in a warehouse. He has also worked as a music teacher.

4A

Ideally it would be a lot of things, objects and techniques and records and shadows; but since it’s a simple inquiry now, I’ll stick to music and circus, mechanics and trajectory.

Cata Aguayo is a multidisciplinary stage artist, researcher and teacher, born in Uruguay. Diploma in circus arts at the University of San Martín, Buenos Aires, and at the higher school of circus arts in Toulouse, ESACTO – Lido. She studies various techniques of contemporary dance and improvisation, specializing in Asymmetrical
Motion, with Lucas Condró. He also studied vocal technique and singing.

In 2018, she created with Alejandro Dutra, the company Olga – Cirqanalogique, finalist at Circusnext 2020-21, winner of the Cross-border Cooperation Fund Travessia Pyrénnés de Cirque and awarded by the Toulouse City Council and the Department of Haute-Garonne. Currently, they are creating their second show. She has been an interpreter for the French companies L’Éolienne and La Grue, choreographer of La June Compagnie and external gaze of several emerging companies. Since 2018 he has been directing the Annual Air Research Laboratory, of La Bonita cooperative.

Pandora

Pandora investigates the gap that exists between the place we are socially attributed to and what we choose to occupy. This margin between what is inherited and what is built. It is born of a desire for reconciliation with one’s own uniqueness, where the personal rebel to thunder universal and political.

Foto: Sofia Chopitea

La 3 et demie is a company composed of five circus artists, specializing in acrobatic: Chiara, Hannah, Apolline, Baptist and Elie. Between 2019 and 2022 they trained at the International School of Circus and Theatre CAU, in Granada, where they met and created the company. Since October 2022, they continue their acrobatic training with the artist Amer Kabbani. In 2023 the company began its first creation with the show ‘Será peor después’.

‘Será peor después’

‘Será peor después’ is a show for all kinds of audiences that mixes circus, theatre and object manipulation. Hand to hand and acrobatics of all kinds are at the service of this company, crossing its emotions and its questions.

In an absurd and bewildered universe, five individuals walk paths from the possible and feasible to the limit of danger. Change of situation, false steps and body deformations. Movements contribute to imagination, rhythm is an inclusive language between artists and the public, in this exchange with the sound of asphalt.

Through tehir comprehensible, conflictive, foolish play, their choreography is a journey in motion. They go from solitude to being together, from absurdity to method, from floor to sky, from sweet to deafness.

Photo: Lisa Lambrech

Julia Behar Bonnet is a circus artist, musician, singer and dancer. He trained in staging at the University of Poitiers (France), and in circus at the Rogelio Rivel school in Barcelona, where he specialized in the art of balance on a cable. In 2019 she embarked on several tours with Gommette and Gabatcho Circus (Switzerland) and collaborated with circus artists as a performer, director, external gaze and/or musician. She currently lives in Toulouse and collaborates with different companies (Sweet Xili Circus Company, Nostraxladamus, etc.). In autumn 2023 begins the creation of ‘Tendre’, a solo that mixes circus, music, dance.

‘Tendre’

Everything begins or ends with a tender and violent desire. Deep and visceral. An emergency. To do in common and call this urgent need for tenderness…

Photo: Milki Lee

If Circus focuses on collecting historical memory and using it as a source of inspiration for their creations. Weave is the ancestral art that inspires the company together with the recovery of the knowledge of its grandmothers.

‘Melic’

‘Melic’ is a dialogue between hand-woven strings that are transformed, tensioned and faded, woven and undone. Strings that hold us, that cradle us. In the “Taller Teixint Memòries” weave with our hands the string that appears in the show the next day. A meeting point to share the art of weaving and telling us anecdotes.

Dora Komenda is an architect and self-taught circus artist from Split, Croatia. In 2015 she achieved a master’s degree of architecture and simultaneously discovered circus, developing in both disciplines ever since. Her portfolio of performances, shows and multimedia exhibitions is rich in collaborations with architects, musicians, visual artists and animators. Since 2018 she has worked as an artistic director in Cirkus Kolektiv, and in 2021 she founded the architectural office Kolektiv tri along with two partners.

Konstrukt

Konstrukt speaks about failure and dealing with wrong choices. Aerial equipment in the show is altered so it becomes fragile, unsafe and unsuitable for use. The characters are mad men, fools who keep trying to perform on it, and invest a lot of effort into a battle that is already lost. They ultimately face a question – how to deal with failure? Acceptance, giving up, stubbornly defying to the point of exhaustion, or a deus ex machina that rescues us all from this curse by a supernatural force, because no solution grounded in reality is possible.

Photo: Jakub Dusek

Cia. La Bel•Bel is formed by Marta Punsola, La Tona, (Cia Zero, Spazio Bizzarro, Cronopis Espai de Circ), and Jordi Puigoriol, el Putxi, (Cie Cirquons Flex, Cie Les Pieds Sur Terre, Cie XY). After their respective training and some professional experiences, in 2023 they exchange artistic ideas and embark together in the creation of a piece that is currently provisionally called ‘Guillem’.

‘Guillem’

Contemporary circus piece narrated in first person. It combines acrobatic balances, movement, text and audiovisuals.

All wounds leave a mark. Sometimes this mark is perceptible and trauma can be recognized as a scar. However, there are experiences that, despite not leaving a physical mark, are housed in the deepest of the soul, hidden in some corner.

The tingling, diplopia and loss of sensitivity corresponds to each of the phases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, which attacks the nervous system. This loss of sensitivity is reflected in parallel with the loss of social sensitivity in all areas.

Even so, light always sneaks through some crack, and therefore, awareness of the wound leads to acceptance and the will to rebuild.

Foto: Oriol Segon