Project with circus performers from the Baltics “Circus creation in Public Space” (18-21 August)
For four days circus artists had experimental workshops in the market, exploring the environment and at the end of these workshops, they produced a final performance in the space.
Eight young professionals from the Baltic States had creative and experimental workshops inside and outside the market building. During the workshops, they looked for ways to creatively explore the space and created adapted performances interacting with the audience, market visitors, and traders during the performance. They studied how to create a meaningfully deep result by studying the space and learning its specifics, together with the contemporary circus directors. During this creative research, participants not only looked for unusual ways to include the architectural structure of the Āgenskalns market and local people in their actions but also observed the daily rituals and communication among market visitors and market traders as well as daily life at the market in general. Their everyday presence in the market created the opportunity to get acquainted with the market as a specific space. At the end of the master classes, the show “Follow me!” was created, during which market visitors could experience the result of this creative research. The content of the performance was both critical of the consumerist nature of modern society, food culture, and cultural clichés, as well as a positive and exciting game with space, spectators, and market visitors, creating symbiosis among all these elements and depicting the market as a potentially contradictory, but certainly creative and community-bringing space.