As a long-valued partner of Activate Performing Arts, Lighthouse Poole is supporting a weekend of performances by Catalan artists in Corfe Castle as part of Inside Out Dorset, the biennial festival of outdoor arts, on Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 September.
“Lighthouse is delighted to be supporting high quality international work being presented in our region,” says Lighthouse Chief Executive Elspeth McBain.
“By presenting some of Europe’s leading circus performance artists in and around the beautiful setting of Corfe, audiences can see and enjoy extraordinary performances, free, in an extraordinary setting as part of Inside Out Dorset.”
Activate director and co-artistic director of Inside Out Dorset, Kate Wood adds: “We are so pleased that long-standing partner Lighthouse Poole is supporting the Catalan artists we are presenting in Corfe Castle. We really value their commitment to Inside Out Dorset, complementing the high quality contemporary circus and dance that we have come to expect at Lighthouse.”
Working with Rohan Gotobed from acclaimed local theatre company Dorsetborn, We Fear is a dynamic, site-specific promenade piece for Sandy Hill Arts addressing global events – possibly in response to Dorset’s county motto Who’s Afear’d – as it probes our innate fear of change and longing to preserve the past.
In the village hall car park, Poi by Cie D’es Tro finds the incredible world champion spinning top juggler Guillem Vizcaíno exploring different types of wood, shapes and support points that have allowed him to create personal and special baldufas (tops).
Staged in the grounds of St Edward’s Church, Arrels by Toc de Fusta is a family-friendly participatory installation, a playful experience with 16 interactive games and structures that serve as creative reinterpretations of specific cultural traditions from around the world, sharing not only their essence but also their history and character.
Idiòfona is artist Joan Català’s invitation to spectators at the National Trust-managed Castle, where admission is free as part of national Heritage Open Days, to create an idiophone, a large sound installation/musical instrument that plays by vibration in an ode to the pleasure of shared experience.
Overseeing the Lighthouse-supported performances by Catalan artists, will be a monumental art installation for Inside Out Dorset – the Consequences giant, a huge temporary artwork that will make its home on the motte of Corfe Castle itself. Essentially, a new Giant for Dorset, it has been created as part of Nature Calling, an inspirational nationwide arts project from the National Landscape Association to connect people with their local natural landscapes, and has been made by artist Becca Gill’s Radical Ritual company with the input of local community groups, who took part in a vast game of Consequences, the collaborative creative game in which participants contribute to a single artwork without seeing the previous contributions before its completion.
Becca and her team worked with local communities to investigate Dorset folk traditions, surrealist art-making and collaborative storytelling in order to create this new mythical creature, while Dorset National Landscape commissioned writer Louisa Adjoa Parker’s new poem This Patch of Land, inspired by the Dorset landscape, has been incorporated into Bridport-born avant-pop composer Douglas Dare’s specially commissioned soundtrack.
Presented by Activate Performing Arts, Inside Out Dorset will see four other locations – Moors Valley, Christchurch, Yeovil, Weymouth – transformed by magical art and dramatic interventions connected by themes of Nature, Landscape and Climate.
For more information about Inside Out Dorset please visit https://activateperformingarts.org.uk/whats-on/inside-out-dorset/
:: Photo by Pete Millson
(NC)