The form
The Creole Performance Cycle will be a theatrical perfomance staged in a number of different cities in Italy, France, Poland, Romania and Hungary. The intention for the performance is that it develops and changes at each stage in the encounter with different places, languages and artists that operate through diverse creative processes and poetics.
The purpose
The purpose of the Creole Performance Cycle is to investigate the process of the work’s development. The final performance of the work is not as important as the process by which it was created. Intercultural and international collaborations are common; our aim is not to demonstrate that artists from different Countries can work together by virtue of the shared ‘language of arts’. Our aim is to echo the processes by which creolised languages are created. Creolized languages are born naturally and rapidly on the basis of need. Similarly, the creation of the Creole Perfomance will involve relating to different poetics in a context of ‘urgency’.
Methodology, stages and organization
The Creole Performance Cycle will be conducted by a single artist (“Creole Performance Director”) or by a small group of artists and/or theatre operators (“Creole Performance Cycle Core Team”) The Director/Core Team will be appointed through a call for proposals.
Creole Performance Cycle Director/Core Team
The Director/Core Team will not be the sole author of the work, their role will be to conduct a theatrical creation process. The Director/Core Team’s project will be submitted to local artists proposed by the Partner who will host the performance. Each Partner hosting the Creole Performance Cycle will be responsible of organization of the scheduled activities in their country. The local artists will respond with their ideas about how to realize the stage of the performance, within the available resources. The Director/Core Team will need to adapt or modify their idea to the suggestions of the local artists, and to the different conditions and places to which they relate. This means that the performance, at each stage, will be the result of multiple and equal contributions from the diverse participating artists.
Preliminary Meetings
The preliminary meetings between the Director/Core Team and the local crews will take place in the period going from July to September 2010, and they will last a minimum of 5 days each.
During the preparatory meetings, the Director/Core Team will meet local artists, technicians and staff, assess potential spaces for the performance, and work with the local crew to develop preliminary ideas.
Artistic Residences
During the residences the Director/Core Team will work with a number of approximately 3 artists (to be selected among directors, actors, musicians, dancers, choreographers, set and costumes designer etc.) on the idea developed during the preliminary meeting (see par. “techincal notes” for the increase of the involved artists number).
Residences – a total of 5 – will last a minimum of 10 days each, they will finish with the performance and they will have to take place between 1 October 2010 and 30 June 2011.
The dates of the residences and the performances will be arranged between the Director/Core Team and the Partners hosting the Creole Performance Cycle.
The Creole Performance Cycle residences will be scheduled as follow:
- Romania, Cluj / FESTIVAL TEMPS D’IMAGES – October 20, 2010
Balletto Civile with Teatrul Imposibil - Francia, Conques / FESTIVAL ERRANCES, December 18, 2010
Balletto Civile with Laurence Leyrolles, Francis Farizon, Muriel Migayrou - Ungheria, Budapest -/VILAGVELEJE FESZTIVAL – GÖDÖR KLUB – January 22, 2011
Balletto Civile with Artus Company - Polonia, Lodz / TOUCHING THEATRE – International Day of Theatre /Lodz, Polonia – March 26, 2011
Balletto Civile with Iga Zaleczna, Julia Jakubowska, Lucia Herszkowicz, Pawel Konopacki, Lukasz Michalak - Italia, Siena / FESTIVAL VOCI DI FONTE – June 24, 2011
Balletto Civile with laLut
The entire Creole Performance Cycle will take place within a final event to be held in Italy or in another Country to be decided.
Creole Performance Cycle Prize
In June 2010, during the 7th Festival Voci di Fonte (Siena), the winning project “L’ALA” by Balletto Civiile, has been awarded and publicly presented.
The Commission intends to publish the best proposals submitted for the Creole Performance Cycle within Playing Identities materials, and to invite their authors to present their project at the Creole Performance Prize giving.
The winner project
L’ALA
The goal is to show the mystery and the roots of Europe through a new writing of a collective Opera between artists from different countries. Against the integration as a levelling of ethnic and cultural identity, the project researches a common ground between cultures and languages and histories … Contradictions and differences in Europe can reach together into a common expression, can build an agreement? How is it possible to give expression to these voices, in the name of anxiety, in the name of joy, in the name of expectation, in the name of a community that meets… Fortress Europe, Europe the new castle for our creativity, travelling, and controlled satisfaction. The proposal is to speak about work, to stay in a concrete space, to speak about a Europe of workers. The idea, the starting point, from which this cooperation born is to be workers. They image a show that will be an action in which the workers of the show, dancers, musicians, stage engineers, actors, designers really create an object on the stage. The cooperation building an object is the show itself. The show is this work, their work will be the show.
The idea of this proposal is in continuity with the last years Balletto Civile’s work, because of the nature of language – Balletto Civile has always tried to get on the stage singing and dancing (often using different languages), creating an original way of expression that was somehow simple, direct and popular – and because Balletto Civile always have had an attention for vital exchange of experience with different cultures.
Balletto Civile
Balletto Civile is a nomadic-based collaborative performance group. In summer 2002 the company restructured itself from the experience of the theatrical group L’IMPASTO comunità teatrale nomade. There are now two distinct layers of membership, which is defined by Core and Associate. Core members are Emanuele Braga, Maurizio Camilli, Michela Lucenti(director), Emanuela Serra. Associate members are a lot of different artists that are used to collaborate with this project. Core members contribute to the conception, research, writing, choreography, documentation, and educational demands of the work.