Trànsits

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.

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.

Morgana was born in Bologna in 1995, with a twin sister. After training in rhythmic gymnastics and studying Psychology at the University of Bologna, she discovered contemporary circus. She trained at the FLIC Circus School in Turin, where she studied clowning, contortion, and contemporary dance. She also obtained a master’s degree in Psychosomatics at the Villaggio Globale in Bagni di Lucca. In 2022, she founded the street circus and theater company Le Vamp and, eventually, resumed playing with Barbies, becoming Miss SBarbie.

Miss SBarbie

Once upon a time there was a plastic body. Maybe 2, maybe 10, maybe a 100… Or maybe a 101! There were once a lot of little cyborgs that brightened the lives of little girls, allowing them to imagine all the possible worlds, places, and moments that those inanimate creatures could materialize and experience. There’s Morgana. 
And there are the Barbies: my friends, my doubles, my audience, my enemies, my superpowers, my bullets… There’s Franchina, the automated car… And, of course, there is Ken… Human!

Arrel trains at the CAU School of Circus and Theatre in Granada, specializing in fixed trapeze. The artist creates and participates in various shows, both circus and other disciplines, standing out in performances such as La Ira, La cultura del odi, or No-conformes. Arrel works as a circus workshop leader and trainer at the Aire Circo Vivo School, La Volta, TuSí(K)Circ, La Rogelio Rivel, Del Revés, and the Caixa d’Eines program, among others, while continuing to train in other scenic and circus disciplines, and is part of Cata Aguayo’s Aerial Creation and Research Laboratory. He/She has also completed a degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology in Barcelona.

‘Lutum’

Lutum is an intimate and brutal journey into the darkest parts of the body’s memory. A raw and organic stage experience that, through circus, symbolic objects, and video projections, explores a territory where fragility, desire, and illness merge. Where the repulsive can bloom and what is sick becomes a shared strength, revealing the relationship between death, sexuality, and gender questioning.

Otra Vez Lunes is an emerging contemporary circus company formed by Sofía Demicheli and Mariana Fernández, two trapeze artists with over ten years of experience on the scene. Their exploration on the trapeze is based on movement research, the search for breaking conventional forms, and using this technique as a poetic and expressive tool through the body in suspension. It also involves supporting each other on stage and on the trapeze, creating a space of trust and mutual support.

This is Not a Love Song

This Is Not a Love Song is a contemporary circus show that explores the complexities of love in pop culture, using satire to question romantic conventions and how they affect female self-perception and relationships. Through the skills of Sofía Demicheli and Mariana Fernández on the trapeze, stereotypes are challenged while creating a poetic narrative through movement. The stage space and visual elements enhance the experience, merging circus art with storytelling in a unique way.

The Circus Company “eia” («unforeseen impulses agreed» in French, “yes” in Sardinian) was founded in 2009 through the fusion of various artists: Armando Rabanera, Fabrizio Giannini, and Cristiano Della Monica (Cirque Vague, Circo de la Sombra, and Le Grand Osim Orchestra), and Francesca Lissia and Celso Pereira (Celso i Frana). With fifteen years of collective experience, five active creations, and over 800 performances in 25 countries, it has established itself as a leading company in contemporary Catalan and Spanish circus. At the core of its creations is a human circus, capable of evoking the complexity of human relationships.

Secrets

Secrets is a creation project for a contemporary indoor circus for five acrobats that will premiere in the Spring/Summer of 2026. In this project we will question ourselves about the passage of time and the transformations that it causes, with special attention on making visible and giving value to those things that we often hide. What would we ask of our last shooting star?

The collective was formed in 2024 following its first creation, Scandale. It originated from an invitation by Martina Monnicchi, who brought together Sofia Zambrano, Karine Saroh, Aïna Duc, Cecilia Stock, Yann Champelovier, Nathalie Maufroy, and Victor Marre-Cast in search of a collective writing process. Beyond this creation, the group aims to produce hybrid performances that engage with and adapt to aerial space.

Scandale

“Let’s try, for once, not to be right.” How does scandal take root in bodies that fight against domination? In bodies that are altered, embodied, and that confess themselves? Scandale aims to explore the construction of norms and the gaze projected onto them. With aerial space as its starting point, the collective works and positions itself at the crossroads of circus, performance codes, and visual arts.

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.

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

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

Ex-libris

Moments of unnoticed happiness: small things or moments of daily life that make us happy, that make us get out of the routine and bring us a ray of light.

Artist collective with the aim of exceed the borders that limit us. His work transcends a level of life positioning of fraternity in front of a world that drives people towards individualism.