Crying Out Loud Blog

The Blender

December 10th, 2010 · Contemporary circus

COL Assistant Producer Daniel Pitt on COL’s circus artist and choreographers mash-up, The Blender.

On some of the coldest days of the year, spending your time in an uninsulated warehouse in London’s Docklands may not be top of anyone’s list of the top things to do. Braving the treacherous conditions to travel to Woolwich’s Hangar Arts Trust (in one case even getting stuck in the snow, abandoning the car, and returning with friends to dig them out) an open-minded group of circus performers and contemporary dance choreographers met for three days of intensive workshops that combined the two artforms. The Blender Project is kindly supported by the same generous people at the Jerwood Charitable Foundation who support me in my placement at Crying Out Loud. [Read more →]

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An Atypical Day in the Office: Introducing Daniel Pitt

November 29th, 2010 · Uncategorized

Joining Crying Out Loud as a DCMS Jerwood Assistant Producer, Daniel Pitt gives an account of a single day at COL as a window onto the glamour of the producing life, the eating habits of French acrobats, and (just glimpsed) the blazing fire of his own long-term career ambitions.

My second official day (a month ago now, blimey) with Crying Out Loud didn’t take place at Toynbee Studios, the company’s base, but instead down in Poole, Dorset, notable for its natural harbour, Brownsea Island, and the fact that the train line cuts impractically right through the high street. At Lighthouse (Poole’s Centre for the Arts, apparently the largest arts centre outside London) I was attending a weekend meeting of the Cross-Channel Circus Arts Alliance (try saying that 10 times fast). Part of the Carte Blanche festival, a celebration of Northern French and Southern English circus, the centrepiece of the weekend was Le Grande C by French acrobats Compagnie XY (produced by Crying Out Loud). [Read more →]

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Greener Grass: The Activate Promoters Exchange

November 17th, 2010 · Contemporary circus, Cross Channel Circus Alliance

Gandini Juggling, Smashed!

The more I see of the arts industry the more it appears as a dense rhizomic mat of projects and networks, layered and interwoven. The Activate Promoters Exchange at Poole was led by Activate, hosted by the Poole Lighthouse, embedded within the Carte Blanche season, part-funded by the European Commission’s INTERREG IV programme, and a continuation of the work of the network of network initiatives that includes City Circ & the Cross Channel Circus Alliance (together: CCCCCA; each C must be louder than last, the A is pianissimo). [Read more →]

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Ethics and S-bends: Subliminati Corporation

October 20th, 2010 · Uncategorized

[A response to Subliminati Corporation's File-Tone from Crying Out Loud's House Critic, John Ellingsworth]

It’s exactly like an encounter with one of the denizens of the 159 bus – the guy that falls into the adjacent seat and would like to have a conversation with you about the surveillance chip in his mobile phone; or the growling woman in the giant coat lying sprawled at the extreme rear; or the man with an aggressive and penetrating and incredibly far-reaching body odour, built you can imagine over a period of years, wafting and seeking. You have to stay until it’s time to get off; you’re only there so you can get somewhere else. Your best strategy is, or seems to be, passivity and stony absence. Don’t engage. Never respond. [Read more →]

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Juggling Études

September 30th, 2010 · Contemporary circus, Jeunes Talents Cirque Europe

DeFracto, Circuits Fermés | photo: Pierre Morel

Jugglers make difficult choices. For French company DeFracto, Guillaume Martinet and Minh Tam Kaplan, it’s a sequence set to Chopin’s Op. 10 No. 04: the two of them sat at a black table with a spread of white balls that they juggle, pass between each other and frantically rearrange into precise yet, to us, opaque configurations. As a scene it’s definitely reminiscent of Collectif Petit Travers’ juggling symphony Pan-Pot, with the same appreciation for the sublime drop, but DeFracto accelerate and shrink it and add an extra layer of difficulty — matching the high, technical beauty of the étude but also mirroring its defining characteristic as a piece where the melodic line is passed from one playing hand to the other. [Read more →]

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Rose English on Lost in Music

August 2nd, 2010 · Uncategorized

On the wall of Rose English’s London studio, mounted on large sheets of white paper, I look at words and images. Men working at a furnace in one picture, and in the next swaddling a glass jar, just past molten, in a rough blanket; a young man flying through the air, thrown by three others; night-black scenes where contortionists balance crystal towers; a diablo joining two bright opalescent cups.  The words then are in pairs, connected to the images or perhaps floating free beside them. [Read more →]

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Waste Time

July 29th, 2010 · City Circ, Contemporary circus

‘Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste… It is prosaic to throw a thing away; it is negative; it is a confession of indifference, that is, a confession of failure.’ G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World [Read more →]

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Critical Mash-up

June 18th, 2010 · Race Horse Company

So as Race Horse rest themselves before their European tour, we look back on the broad landscape of their critical success — in the Guardian, The Times, The Portsmouth and The Highland News, on Spoonfed and Whatsonstage and The British Theatre Guide — and using this aggregate data-set, with the intention only of saving your precious time, we offer the entire spectrum of critical response mashed into a single review:

[Read more →]

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Petty Mal and Peter Andre

June 10th, 2010 · Race Horse Company

Peter Andre

It’s the morning of a beautiful day. Ugly buildings standing sharp against the blue sky; reflected light firing across lines of windows. I am on the Southbank, somewhere in the tangled middle of a daydream in which I micromanage the rebranding of Peter Andre as ‘P. Andre’ (for his new rap career), walking to London Studios for the rehearsals and shoot of an episode of Channel 4’s new 5 O’Clock Show—specifically the Friday episode, on which members of Finnish Race Horse Company will be teaching host Peter Andre the rudiments of acrobatic ball.

[Read more →]

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English translation of Üsküdara Gideriken a translation of one of the songs featured in What If…

February 5th, 2010 · Uncategorized

Üsküdara Gideriken
When Going to Üsküdar

Üsküdar’a gider iken aldi da bir yağmur
When going to Üsküdar, rain started

Katibimin setresi uzun eteği çamur
My scribes’ coats are long, his skirt is muddy

Katip uykudan uyanmış gözleri mahmur
The scribe has woken up from sleep, his eyes are cloudy

Katip benim ben katibin el ne karışır
The scribe is mine, and I’m the scribes, hands will mix

Katibime kolalı da gömlek ne güzel yaraşır
How much it suits my scribe to have a starched collar

Üsküdar’a gider iken bir mendil buldum
On the way to Üsküdar I found a kerchief

Mendilimin içine lokum doldurdum
And I filled the kerchief with Iokum (Turkish delight)

Ben yarimi arar iken yanımda buldum
When I looked for my helper, I found him at my side.

Katip benim ben katibin el ne karışır
The scribe is mine and I’m the scribes and hands will mix

Katibime kolalı da gömlek ne güzel yaraşır
How much it suits my scribe to have a starched collar

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