Trànsits

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.

Sweet drama

Life is a SWEET DRAMA! It’s caothic and full of imperfections just like us. Get the peace among this chaos…this is the light. And the light only exists if there is darkness.

THE END IS NIGH!

12 different universes coexist in the same apocalyptic space-time. Its approach, besides being artistic, is human and circus apparatus are understood as a wealth, rather than a restriction.

Mitone

Let’s make an experience together. Mitone, up or down. Leon or Leo. Not one, not the other. A balance between two worlds. The master moment: the jump.

Arrels

The ARRELS project is born out of the need for dialogue between the way of inhabiting the trapeze and the way of observing it through cinematic optics. It seeks how the gesture nourishes the image and how this entails an expansion of  its possibilities.

ROOM 100 has been established by Antonia Kuzmanić and Jakov Labrović in 2010. Their first performance “C8H11NO2” earned them a title of “Jeunes Talents Cirque Europe 2009-2010” laureate and critics of being an “exceptional example of an intelligent, accurate, deliberate and intensive work”. SInce then, they performed in USA, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Lithuania and Croatia and produced “split”, “Seed” and “BLINK” performances.

Beside performing and producing contemporary circus performances, ROOM 100 is undergoing different projects of strengthening contemporary circus scene in Croatia and introducing contemporary circus arts, its history and importance to wider audience. Main activity is running HALA 100 – residency place for contemporary circus arts (first of its kind in Croatia and ex Yugoslavia) – and hosting international circus artists for creation, performances and workshops.

C8H11NO2 (2.0)

C8H11NO2 (2.0) is a new derivation of ROOM 100‘s original work that premiered back in 2011 in Academie Fratellini after being awarded as laureate of Jeunes Talents Cirque Europe program (now circusnext). Within “The Sphere” project, a research-creation project developing new ecologies of funding for the performing arts, ROOM 100 has been given an opportunity to bring back to life a performance that was last time presented in 2015. C8H11NO2 (2.0) is going to be another engaged performance aiming to deepen our understanding of neurodiversity and to raise the awareness and sensibility of the public about its different dimensions and complexities. We have envisioned a starkly physical creation – a mixture of contortion, dislocation, acrobatics, butoh and break dance – with a strong visual component, that will, hopefully, once again, cross the boundaries of performing arts…

Circus artist (Rogelio Rivel Circus School – 2016) and social teacher (University of Barcelona – 2013) by training, and by untraining, all the rest: investigator of the performative action and movement, driving force behind pedagogic projects with art as a transversal pivot, trainer, creator and highly interested in interdisciplinarity.

She studies with professors like: Mal Pelo, Hamza Benlabied, Andrés Corchero, Alexander Gavrilov and Semolina Tomic, amongst others.  In 2016 she cofounds the Cia. Capes (CAT) company, a hand-to-hand duo. In 2018 she becomes a co-founder and artist of the Ino Kollektiv (FR) female hand-to-hand collective, with which she currently works. Together with this collective, she forms part of a new circus, song and psychology project: Ekco (MX-IT-FR-ES) and another spontaneous circus and improv project about acrobalance: Improportes (FR-ES), together with another company: Kolektivo Konika. In 2022 she commences the personal research for the Cavitat f project.

Cavitat f.

Each body is a synthesis of his own history. Memory can be explicit when we can reasonably explain or describe a concrete experience, or implicit when the body reacts to experiences that cannot be processed by the mind. “Cavitat f.” is an artistic project that investigates the materialization of memory in the body, or in other words; embodied memories: everything that is recorded on the body as a movement, gesture, sound or posture in memory (mostly unconscious) of a concrete experience. The idea is to facilitate a work that puts the body in relation to the codification of these memories, to understand the forms and their learning processes, to see which ones and why they have been forgotten and if it is necessary to make them visible and perhaps resignify them. The project wants to observe how the context affects all this and also the relationship between two or more bodies and think how to generate collective body memories.

Picture: Helena Roig Prat

Aurora Caja (Palma de Mallorca) studies plastic arts at the Escola Massana in Barcelona and beaux-arts at the University of Barcelona. She continues her training at the FLIC Scuola di Circo in Turin, Italy. There she specializes in the discipline of verticals. Her first project is called En Perill d’Extinció (2016).

She also takes part in creative labs with professionals like Tomic, Jean Michael Guy and Volmir Cordeiro, Roberto Magro, Marta Torrents, Eva Ordoñez, Cristian Coumin and Pau Portabella.

In 2018 she starts the development of her first show, No verbal. In October 2021 she takes part in the FOCON training at the ÉSACTO Lido (École Supérieure des Arts du Cirque Toulouse-Occitanie, FR). In 2022 she presents No verbal in the form of a tour at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, as part of the Creació i Museus device and within the Grec Festival schedule, in Barcelona. The show is produced by La Central del Circ and the Picasso Museum.

At the same time, she continues to work as a visual artist, in collaboration with Cia. Eia, Joan Català, and also independently. In 2022 she creates the exhibition Out of the Box.

No verbal

“No verbal” transcends into an intimate dimension; into a placenta, into a mental space. It’s a discovery trip which reveals itself the same way light penetrates darkness.

It’s a physical story that talks about being human from her most carnally honest perspective. A struggle to find her own voice in a world overwhelmed by noise. A rebellion.

In a plastic universe, the body defines the narrative. Its language is made of balance, acrobatic motion, contortion and drawing.

Photographer: Gaby Merz

It was at the Crescer e Viver circus school, in 2011, where Cássia and Rodrigo met for the first time. During training, Cássia continued her drama studies and Rodrigo began a technical course on contemporary dance. Together with 10 other students, they form Cia Circo no Ato, with which they produce 4 performances in 5 years, they specialize in acrobatic poses, travel all over Brazil and become a reference in the Rio de Janeiro circus. In 2017 they take their most recent performance, A Salto Alto directed by Roberto Magro, on a European tour, passing through Spain, Italy, Portugal and Belgium. During this time, they decide to expand their stage research as a duo and they begin a new training at the Lido Circus School, in Toulouse.

Once they completed this training, they commenced a small, 15 minutes, project called Despir, joining UBA, the new creation from Bordeaux’s Smart Cie, which premiered on July 9^th 2022. At the end of 2021 they begin imagining their first long performance: Rupestre.

‘Rupestre’

‘Rupestre’ is a poetical and corporeal license to merge past, present and future created as a surreal escape to the prehistoric origin of humanity. The intention is to reconstruct, expand and synthesize symbols, images, tools and movements capable of provoking a reflection contained in gender equality and the preservation of nature.

Music plays a main role in this show. The instruments will be played on stage with the help of a loop pedal. The plot develops from percussion, the first sound impulse of primitive man: through the clash between objects, the noises are transformed into sound, then into rhythm, melody, dance and a circus show.

‘Rupestre’ immerses itself in a trance as a language of memory, with the body conceived as the guardian of ancestry and our greatest tool to access the past and co-create a more equal and diverse future.

Firma foto: Benoit Martrenchar

Soa Payet, stage author, works with memory, the one that will be and the one that will become following our present actions. It’s about rediscovering the stories that arise from the circus imaginary, in a more extensive sense, where dance, text and circus object mix.

He grew up between the Paris region, the island of Reunión, Columbia and finally Ecuador. He trained as a circus artist at the Amiens, Montpellier, Brussels and Toulouse circus schools.
He was a dance, clown, Butoh and theater apprentice. All these fields led him to focus his work on his own roots, to understand that which traverses generations and demands listening to.

Zoé Debary, in theater, carried out an academic research on circus gestures and words. From her trapeze-dance, she came down to the stage floor to take a step into the choreography of bodies through GAGA (GAGA MOUVEMENT) dance and the actor’s opening thanks to the Chekov training, in Brussels. Following her experience, she accompanies circus artists in their creations, «Circus remix» from Tercer Circ (2017-2018), «No puc morir» from Cie La Gesti (2019-2020), «PAPY» from Lucha Emilia (2020-2022).

Her research resonates in her works and her works resonate in her research. How do we embody (drama)circuses?

La memòria de la Pepa

Our project came to life between the mountains of Medellín and the heights of Reunión. We’re looking to formulate our internal screams. Screams of uprooting, screams hidden in crammed throats, silent screams that are heard from the bottom of the earth, screams of our ancestors and descendants.

“La memòria de la Pepa” is a circus story, the story of Pipo, a globetrotter. Remember, remember, make it materialize, bring it to light, the terrific spirit of the colonial plunderer and the depth of the jungle. Juggling with his “toquilla” straw hats, his candles, his dangling fabrics, he structures the space and his time. Pipo transforms and creates his own rituals, he dances his loss, with love.

We don’t choose to represent any culture in particular. We choose to invent a story inspired by the memory of our elders and its role in today’s questions which demands new formulations. We gather in the history of our memories to find fragments of what has been lost and what has to be reinvented.

Born May 2^nd 1998 in Badajoz, Extremadura region of Spain, where there are many oak trees. He was less than two years old when he was dancing to Sonia y Selena in the living room of his house, imitating each choreography from his sister’s graduation VHS tape. When he was eight years old, he wrote a poem to Virgin Mary and the rest is history.

He did his professional training at Carampa, between 20016 and 2018, and during the next course he became a part of various Freestanding Courses at DOCH, School of Dance and Circus (Stockholm), of different specialties of his discipline, hand balance acts and a course on the artistic development within circus disciplines.

In June 2019 he takes the tests and is admitted at the Brussels Higher School for Circus Arts, and three years later he graduates, and has longer hair, and he likes rain less, and he likes coffee more, and writing more, and the circus more, I suppose. He also receives his Master’s degree in Poetry from the Madrid Writer’s School and is part of the Simul Solus Collective. El patio is his first solo project as a creator/artist.

El patio

‘El patio’ is an interdisciplinary research project that plays the part of experimenting with intimacy, desire and the power of language through the stage fusion of poetry and circus, using acro-dance, hand balance acts, live writing, sound works and voice as means and channels to express.

There’s a factual meeting point between the two disciplines, from which the skeleton of the project is born: the way in which they use pure technique as a creativity channel and form as the final object. Building a space within a space, “El patio” plays with the limits between the truly intimate and the completely public, as when you try to disclose or share something intimate, its very intimate quality vanishes and it acquires a new dimension for a few seconds.

“Intimacy is a fish flopping between two oily hands and I’m losing oil, a lot of oil”.

Born in Reus, he trained at the Rogelio Rivel circus school in Barcelona (2010-2012), the Pekin International Art School and ÉSACTO Lido in Toulouse (2014-2016)

He specialized in hand balance acts, torsion, dance and theater. Co-creator of the Random company. CircusNext 2019 prize winner.

He performed in different European locations, at the Circ d’Hivern de l’Ateneu Popular 9Barris and Mercat dels Flors (Barcelona), the Theatre de la Cité International (Paris), CircoBalkana (Croatia), La Grainerie (Toulouse), Halles de Scharbeck (Brussels), Mesopotàmia Circus (a festival in Türkiye). He danced with artists from Krump, Butoh, African dance, raves and elite level Bachata.

‘Candy’

“I encountered certain difficulties when going back to regain possession of myself. It’s a strange experience. Perceiving the legs as separate objects, estranged from the mind, to which they’re connected almost by chance. Imagine yourself with skepticism, as a pile of flailing members… and one needs these members, needs them desperately, but even so, sometimes, they seem very strange, very strange. The legs, above all.”