Kaleider (UK)
“Time stood still when Kaleider performed the piece ‘Arch’ last night. A truly magical experience.” – Aarhus Festuge
Arch is an attempt to build a freestanding arch, made two-thirds of concrete and one-third of ice.
Deceptive in its simplicity, Arch unfolds as a surprising emotional journey. An exquisite combination of breath, heart, and muscle entangle with the perpetual inevitability of collapse.
Touching audiences with themes of death, renewal, and hope, Arch points towards the extraordinary, yet flawed, systems humans create: language, economies, architectures, democracies – and, inevitably, to the impact of these systems on our ecological system, and on ourselves.
In what could be described as a kind of “installation opera,” a languageless score by Verity Standen holds and moves us through a relentlessly physical performance; at times meditative, and at others arresting and highly charged.
We can tell you what happens in this work: you will witness two people attempt to build a freestanding arch in ice and concrete whilst a beguiling vigil of voices holds your attention. What is less straightforward is to tell you how it will make you feel – only that it will.
Two works of fire and wire, of experiments in physics and materiality cloaked in a circus guise. Free to all outdoors we finish our summer with a program of new circus and bold vision.
Kaleider is an international Production Studio that combines installation, live performance, and digital in our artworks, almost always in collaboration.
Kaleider is led by Artist and Director Seth Honnor and Executive Producer Katie Keeler, with Artist and Producer Irene Urrutia, and Producer and Company Manager Jocelyn Mills.
Kaleider Studios is in Exeter, UK where the company makes their work and runs projects.
Singers: Aminita Francis, Ellian Showering, Kate Smith, Phil King, Verity Standen
Builders: Nao Nagai, Seth Honnor
Kaleider shares space with other creative organizations, individuals, and collaborators.
They tour to cities, festivals, venues and public spaces all over the world.
Arch is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Arch research and development is supported by IN SITU, the European platform for artistic creation in public space, in the frame of the project UN(COMMON) SPACES, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, and supported by Freedom Festival Arts Trust.
Arch was developed with the support of the National Theatre’s Generate programme.
Arch is co-commissioned by Theater op de Markt.
Arch is backed by hundreds of Citizen Commissioners: individual donors who supported Kaleider to make and bring this work into the world.
