Mimbre!!!

I guess I didn't really tell you the big news. So, I'm moving to London yes, and I'm joining the UK company Mimbre for their new production, Bench. Mimbre is a local and international circus and street theatre company, producing innovative and extraordinary acrobatic performance work and promoting a positive, strong image of women. I've wanted to work with them for years now and everything is very exciting, and my mind is all over the place... 

Information about the creation:

"A Bench: in a park, on the street, in a square; sitting, sleeping, climbing, jumping, meeting, reading, gossiping. Making friends. Ageing. Rejuvenating. Bench is Mimbre’s new show for 2014, an outdoor show with 3 performers, easy to tour, portable and suitable for any public space or event. Bench is a show about the everyday dance of life, our urban landscape, and a cavalcade of characters who come and go; viewed through the eyes of a woman who observes, makes friends, confronts or ignores the people who pass… occasionally turning upside down to see if the world looks better from that angle.

Bench will be a series of sketches bound together by our silent narrator, talking through movement and acrobatics, and accompanied by a beautiful score. Three performers will magically transform between ages and gender, caricatures and characters; spell-binding movements will be mixed with mundane moments and brief encounters. The variety of people passing through our city life will be viewed and encountered through the prism of the woman and the bench she has appropriated. Each character-transformation creates a small choreography (snaking under the bench to change into a dress, falling over the armrest to get out of a jacket, jumping into a headstand to fit into a cap…), each character brings another sketch and snapshot from a life.

Bench will be set directly in the urban landscape where it will also be performed, each choreography and scene rooted in scenes from real life. Events, encounters and feelings will be physicalised, crystallised and turned into beautiful dance as well as commenting on the theatre happening around us every day – if only we looked.

Bench is directed by Lina Johansson, with an original score composed by Ted Barnes - his “songs are like glass marble worlds that clink next to each other and should be put in your pocket and carried around with you all day” (Kathryn Williams). The Bench set is carefully designed and cleverly crafted by  Michalis Kokkoliadis - ‘ingeniously simple set design, aided by an appropriate sprinkling of make believe’ (Eastern Daily Press).

If you are interested in booking this show, please contact us on info@mimbre.co.uk. As Bench is a new show, we’ll offer you a discount of 20% if you book before the end of January."

18 Jan 2014