Creation Artists - Catalonia

The Performance Corporation run residency “Creation 21/22” gives artists from different disciplines time and resources to collaborate and learn more about site specific multi disciplinary work

I am just back from a fantastic and creative week in Olot, Catalonia, where we got to meet with many festival producers, work with students in Escola Universitària ERAM in Girona and create our own piece of multi disciplinary, site specific performance.

We were hosted by Institut Ramon Llull and as always, we hit the ground running, meeting with Mike Ribalta, director of FiraTàrrega , Lucy Medlycott director Irish Street Arts, Circus & Spectacle Network & Susana Millet Gomez representing Institut Ramon Llull followed by Tena Busquet, director of Sismògraf Olot in the beautiful Teatre Principal in Olot.

Our leaders and guides for the week were the ever inspiring Jo Mangan and Dina Hamdan, who took us on a walk through Olot on day one with the warning that anywhere we passed could be our next performance space! This eventually turned out to be the beautiful cemetery in the centre of Olot, up against the backdrop of an extinct volcano, the floor covered in black rock.

We were told to work individually to prepare a performance for the dead. This was challenging in many ways but ultimately everyone, as always with this super talented group, came up with a wildly varied set of performances.

We were then put into performance groups of 5, to start work on our site specific group piece, with the direction to think of the word “Serendipity”. I was delighted to get the chance to work with Alessandra Azevado, Ali Clarke, Polly Shapkina and Bridget Ni Dhuinn. All with different backgrounds including, dance, choreography, arial artist and maker. We immediately headed up the incredible volcano where we came across a stunning round tower. It seemed to unleash something in us as I started messing on the viola, the ladies were literally climbing the walls and hanging off railings, it was a lot of fun. Ultimately though we decided against this as our venue, it almost felt like the building and the view was a show in itself, so back to the drawing board!

(Creation Artists pictured in this post include: Alan Howley, Mark Buckeridge, Emma Finegan, Elena Lalucat + bump, Laia Santanach, Allesandra Azevedo, Ali Clarke, Bridget Ni Dhuinn and Polly Shapkina. Also pictured are Director of The Performance Corporation Jo Mangan, producer Tara Ni Chleirigh and Dina Hamadan)

We had a wonderful day in Girona working with Jordi Duran and his students in Escola Universitària ERAM, followed by a meeting with Narcìs Puig and a tour of Teatre Municipal de Girona with the inspirational and very proactive director Elena Carmona.

Then it was back to planning our piece. We discovered a beautiful section of countryside close to our hotel and whilst walking, trying ideas out and thinking, we realised this was our performance…a walking, silent piece. We then decided to form “tableaus” at certain points on the journey to represent obstacles we face in life. Some of these included:

The fear of being left behind/being left out
The refusal to see what is in front of you
changed perspective
ancestral knowledge

and many more. We also used what was around us, such as a big coup full of lovely chickens and a gorgeous peacock. We also planned how to interact with any members of the public we might encounter, especially cars passing. Such as crouching with our hands over our ears, chasing after them or waving enthusiastically! We were also massively upstaged by the unexpected arrival of a beautiful horse during our show but had to just relax and go with it.

Throughout the performance we also wanted to connect with our childish sides, suddenly breaking into a game of tag or pushing each other out of the way and as it turned out, having fun in the rain…more on that later!

Our meeting with Iva Horvat was a whirlwind of information which we all felt slightly overwhelmed by but as always, ultimately very useful and thought provoking. We also met with Daphne Malherbe and Isaac Vila.

Role play with Iva Horvat and Ali Clarke

The morning of our performance, we were taken by surprise with the arrival of a magnificent thunder storm and monsoon like rain. Unfortunately we were some way from the hotel and as we began to run back, soaked to the bone, a white van pulled up and the two men inside gestured for us to get in. Now normally, the five of us would NOT be doing that but thankfully we were dropped at the hotel to try and dry out!

So this was my first experience of site specific! Anyway we dried off and got back out there for the performance, but it meant there was a whole section we hadn’t been able to properly map out. This added to the excitement though as we had to trust each other and follow each others lead. Working with these women was such a wonderful, fulfilling experience. I definitely look forward to working with them again soon.

Serendipity…..we left the forest at the end of our performance to be met by our white van saviours, who lived in a beautiful house attached to a church …they were having a party and invited us all in for a beer, sing song in the church and Jo even got to ring the bell! What a surreal and perfect end to the experience.

Oh and huge shout out to the other 5 who created a visual masterpiece in an underground carpark, it couldn’t have been any more different!