London International Mime Festival 2017

Celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2017, the London International Mime Festival will run from 9 January to 4 February next year. It is a unique event as a once a year chance to see the very best and newest contemporary visual theatre that embraces circus-theatre, mask, physical theatre, object theatre and puppetry. It has been said that any new movement in theatre can always be traced back to its beginnings in the mime festival. Over 34 days, 17 invited companies will give 120 performances of productions that are almost all UK or London premieres: at the Barbican, Southbank Centre, Central Saint Martin’s Platform Theatre, Jacksons Lane, The Peacock, Soho Theatre, and Shoreditch Town Hall. Artists from Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Norway, Spain, Finland and New Zealand will be joining some of Britain’s emerging talents, as well as already established names. The 2017 festival opens at The Peacock in Holborn with Gandini Juggling’s Smashed: Special Edition, inspired by the work of dance and theatre maker, Pina Bausch, to perform nostalgic, filmic scenes with hundreds of apples. Highlights also include Familie Flöz, Germany’s mask-theatre virtuosos, return with more award-winning comedy in Teatro Delusio With their expressive masks and amazing quick-change artistry, three actors play thirty different characters and bring the whole theatre to life – backstage as well in the limelight. 2016 Pina Bausch Fellow Euripides Laskaridis (Greece) will perform Relic and make his UK debut. Laskaridis undertakes daily chores with added glamour, pre-occupied with ideas about transformation in this mix of live art, cabaret and vaudeville. Kiss & Cry by Charleroi Danses (Belgium) is a story that stars a duo of dancing hands, their ballet filmed live and screened for cinematic perspective. The show is shot and projected simultaneously on a big screen, from Belgian filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael and choreographer Michèle Anne De Mey. Imbalance, a new show by Joli Vyann (UK) explores our dependence on technology, using acrobatic skills and athletic dance. Former stunt man and circus artist Jan Patzke and ex-gymnast and dancer Olivia Quayle have joined forces with award-winning director and dance-maker Jonathan Lunn, whose credits include choreography for Richard Curtis’ movie Love Actually, and Anthony Minghella’s Truly, Madly, Deeply.