Artists

The term ‘Circus Without Circus’ attracts me a lot, because it represents all my questions for more than two years. How is the circus renewing itself after 200 years and more of history and research? Can the circus stay circus without a circus? Is it possible to keep circus writing codes without necessarily being prisoner to physical technique?

Bambou Monnet (FR)

My language is mostly my aerial circus technique, but my goal is to use this technique in new ways and contexts and to change it according to new insights resulting from different approaches. I feel that I already carry values of interdisciplinarity within myself, being in between two careers – circus and architecture. In my circus practice I translate and use teachings from architecture, and they can easily be translated to other art forms as well. Some examples would be thesis about rhythm, proportion of a part in relation to the whole, and the quotation that idea has no form. I think there are infinite ideas, principles and thesis to be explored in different mediums and conclusions to be drawn from this.

Dora Komenda (HR)

When all stage art and everything else closed down due to corona it became more or less impossible to train aerials. So I have trained contortion, character, dance, movement work. In August, when I touched the trapeze again, everything was heavy, limited and painful. I’m not a newly educated circus artist, you know, I left CNAC 8 years ago. But I am rebranding and looking for new ways of finding collaborations and inspiration to keep creating. On the ground.

Elise Bjerkelund Reine (NO)

For the biggest part of my professional career I worked in a collective context for bigger circus companies like Cirque du Soleil and Machine de Cirque. The focus was always very technical. Only recently I started to work in a more interdisciplinary and experimental approach, creating my own research performances. At the moment I’m letting my specific circus equipment go and I start using the public space as main inspiration.

Joren De Cooman (BE)

As I’m starting new creation projects at the moment, I want to bring some materials I’m working on to the Circus Without Circus residencies: new circus materials (a Chinese pole in twenty pieces), an element (I work with fire), and wax construction. I’d like to meet a new artist to bring these materials together and reinvent them. I also want to share my aesthetics, and what drives me in arts, which is research on reality. How to play with real constraints altering bodies and intent, I also like to play with expectations and to discover what we do with them.

Nicolas Fraiseau (FR/IT)

I would like to find a way to invite the public to find the artist on stage, as a moving museum, and question the active or passive position of it. I would love to go further than the circus ‘rules’ and go more towards a performative event. I would like to enhance slowness, calm energy and fragility, which in my opinion is sometimes stigmatised in circus shows, I would like not to have to catch the public by being in a strong and frontal energy but slowly make him come to the artists.

Noémie Deumié (FR)

I’m in the process of becoming a professional circus artist. This project is a great opportunity to complement my artistic vocabulary by providing an opportunity to meet and collaborate creatively with other artists. Contemporary circus allows a very fine exploration of body and movement. When the body and mind of a circus artist are becoming rich in different kinds of expression, a wide range of dramaturgic possibilities are opening up. To my mind feeling the freedom of expression within the body and mind goes through a long learning process in order to lead to new forms of original and interesting performance.

Petra Najman (HR)

During my time in circus school from 2011-2018 and since then, my work has often been based on examining how a small detail, something ‘unimportant’, can be blown up into something big and fantastic. For example, taking a plastic bag and manipulating it with the use of juggling and magic, so that the bag changes from low to high value for the audience. Which might get people to value more things around them in their everyday life. I’m curious to see other artists translate that into their own practice. To create something out of nothing.

Villads Bugge Bang (DK)

Our society puts labels on everything. We define people and things by how useful they are. I have the feeling this tendency limits us in our being. Every art form has different subdivisions that in turn are divided into multiple category’s, practices or styles. We should not let this phenomenon limit our creativity. In cross-disciplinary exchanges creativity starts from our inner differences, making it possible to push beyond the current terrain of (contemporary) circus. And most importantly, when applied to my own case, such exchanges make it possible for me to reach beyond my current boundaries as an artist/researcher.

Ward Mortier (BE)

I am an architect but I have been recently growing a deep interest for performing arts, I see them very interconnected with architecture and I am currently exploring this intuition in dialogue with practitioners who join performance and architecture in their works. I recently won a research grant at Det Danske Institut for Feb ‘21 to study the correlation between architecture and live performance in public space, so I would be very curious to share my thoughts with my paired fellow and turn them into practice by working with a circus artist.

Cristina Gallizioli (IT)

I have spent years honing my craft, mostly in the context of fairly narrow artistic educations. But now, free from those restrictions, I have the desire to challenge and stretch the boundaries of what I have been doing and see how other practices and art forms can inform my work, in this case – circus art. I believe I have a concrete artistic style and feel confident enough to allow it to be opened, manipulated and transformed.

Elliot Minogue-Stone (UK)

I am curious about the interplay between people and peculiar moving objects. I often work with technology but my approach is material centred and inspired by our playful human ability to imagine and project personalities on to animate objects. By working with circus, I hope to learn more about the body as a tool for expression and play. I hope to experiment on these themes and perhaps discover material relevant for a performance where performing objects and humans are part of the same story.

Harvey Bewley (UK)

Through my work I strive for a more inclusive and sustainable society. Therefore I create poetic platforms that address social themes and invite people to engage and reflect. Encounters between people are the cornerstone of my artistic practice. The starting point, however, is often a psychological concept, an observation, or a question. It would be a great challenge to explore how to start from a more physical or embodied approach, as I think a lot of circus artists do, but that is an assumption. Researching this assumption is already interesting and makes me eager to dive in.

Ilon Lodewijks (NL)

The reason why I am interested in participating in this program is precisely the interdiscipline that I am developing further in my artistic work and personal construction. Throughout my artistic career as an academic painter, I often looked for more ways to express myself, and they themselves were often artistic, such as drawing comics and illustrations, and graffiti art, or street art. Drawing comics gave my painting work a new dimension, and that is sequentially, the possibility of creating movement, in a still static medium-comic.

Ivan Svagusa (HR)

I make my best music when I make it in relation to or in collaboration with another art discipline. I have a lot of experience making music for theater, dance and installations and I really love the extra layers, meanings, feelings, rhythms that the combination of disciplines can add. Curiosity about what these combinations can mean or become, play a very important role in my creative process. The wonderful world of circus seems like an inspiring new direction for me. In addition, I am also very curious about finding a circus artist who joins my musical world (which can perhaps be called alternative or experimental) and of course take my chance to immerse myself into his/her world.

Kwinten Mordijck (BE)

In my way to consider movement, I work a lot with images and mental projections to transform my body, to explore different qualities and physicality’s. This approach allows me to discover new paths and apprehend movements as textures. The idea is that imagination and sensations inside the body shape an energy that turns into movement. When I work with material, the meeting with this concrete material is quite instinctive. I look for its possibilities, its limits, metaphoric images that can emerge. I’d like to share this choreographic process with a circus artist within these residencies.

Natacha Kierbel (FR)

I very much like experimentation processes, but am mostly a loner in art practices and would like to change that. As a director of animated films and an animator I mainly work alone from home. I am getting tired of that type of work, would like to change that practice, work more with people and contribute to some collectiveness.

Natko Stipanicev (HR)

I work both with objects and improvisation and I would like to see how those things and my practice of Flying Low (among other things) could meet the different practices of circus artists. I’m also interested in working site specific and because I found that the experimentations of a lot of circus companies trying to explore new ways of performing in the city or in the nature really change the experience of the spectator, I believe this program could lead me to create performances with a new gaze.

Thalia Pigier (FR)