I've been utterly neglectful of my blog over the last few months/ year. The reasons for this are varied and valid. PaperDolls has taken over my life, pretty much, and it's a good complaint. Since moving back to Dublin after 9 months working and training in Belfast, the productions and plans have been coming hard and fast. I feel that, like a dynamo, PaperDolls were storing up ideas and energies in Belfast, only for this energy to be unleashed in and onto Dublin.
Constellations will be PaperDolls most ambitious show to date. A completely original production, it incorporates intensive ensemble corde lisse choreography, physically challenging trapeze work and Shibari - the tradition of Japanese rope bondage, used in this production as a new aerial apparatus for suspending swinging bodies. Constellations will also be PaperDolls first socio-political production, addressing personal and political issues we feel connected to and strongly about. Most primarily, it's about the right to live as one chooses, living actively, living critically and living beyond imposed expectations of what the norm is, including physical, sexual, and psychological norms. Constellations imagines adulthood as if all the vastness of childhood could remain intact in all us grown-ups and questions why this is not the case. Constellations acknowledges the difficulty of negotiating one's adulthood in the world, and explores freedom within restriction and vigor within monotony. In another way, Constellations is about digesting all that has come before and is a ritual of passing so that something new and wise can emerge from a place of consciousness, honesty, strength, vulnerability, compassion, solidarity and play.
Constellations acknowledges the limitless interconnectedness of the universe. Between me and you, each performer, performer and each audience member. In a way, Constellations is how we make our art - drawing on multi-faceted elements to produce a cohesive work. It's like working out equations. There is connectedness to be found in every circumstance and answers to be found in the universe for each searching mind. These answers will not all be scientific, we are more than chemistry, but physicality and chemistry play a huge part in the human story. Our desire, our intention. Magic, divinity and marvel also play important roles.
Constellations is illustrative of the processes of personal illumination and the difficulties of survival. Constellations is physical: we play with boundaries, our abilities and relationships. We play with rules and perception. We play.
More information and tickets:
Photos: Malcolm McGettigan
Rope: Dommy Darko
Creative Direction: Emily Aoibheann
Location: Occupied bank, Belfast & Catalyst Arts, Belfast
Find yourself without sleep, eye-up strangers in the street.
Face caked in muck, smacked with a rope, screaming till our heads spin
off. Smashed paint in grass, got dirty knees, conducting rituals on your
housing estate green. Radiating magic, laughing, hissing, we mingle
with the night and cry; it's alright. We attempt honesty, we attempt
trust, we attempt vulnerability, we attempt forgiveness. We attempt
survival. We risk everything. We are constantly open and ready for
anything. A shamanic trip seeking truth and necessity in suspended
territory of uninhibited youth, energy, physical ability and ropes.
PaperDolls present Constellations, a visceral and bold statement of
intent which divides our eternal truths from the superficial variations.
They came out of nowhere last year with their eponymous debut. This ferociously talented collective are out to take over the world — Róise. (Director, ABSOLUT Fringe)
