There is just one month to go until Activate Performing Arts’ biennial outdoor arts festival Inside Out Dorset will return to entertain and engage audiences from across Dorset and the UK. Brimming with free outdoor art across 5 festival sites, Inside Out Dorset welcomes scores of artists from many countries to present hundreds of performances and installation.
In Poole on 16th and 17th September, audiences will be treated to storytelling, movement and musical performances. The vivid and vital theatre experience Lives of Clay is full of heart and made of mud. Dance, music and live ceramics combine as internationally renowned Bharata Natyam dancer and prominent ceramicist, Vidya Thirunarayan, combines dancing with throwing pots on stage to tell stories rich with drama and emotion. Also at Poole, Stuart Henderson presents The Phat Controller, his fanfares for trains. Utilising Poole level crossing – an unusual fixture where the South Western Railway main line crosses the pedestrianised High Street – this unique location will celebrate the ‘interruptions’ with fanfare and music.
Across 16th and 17th September, Poole will host critically acclaimed choreographer Chloe Loftus and multi-award winning Maori artist Rodney Bell, who performs in his wheelchair. Their captivating outdoor arial performance, The Air Between Us, celebrates equality and connection; exploring our capacity to exist in harmony, with each other and with our environment. Two dissimilar bodies meet in Gap of 42, which will be performed both at Poole and Wimborne, to create extraordinary acrobatics. 42cm separates performers Chris and Iris in height and 42 kg in weight. Three wooden objects equalize the difference in height and become a third partner on stage to create a show that is a compilation of contemporary circus, physical theatre and dance.
From 20th to 24th September, the festival’s Wild Woodbury site at Bere Regis, which is owned by Dorset Wildlife Trust, will welcome visitors to enjoy varied programming including workshops, talks and local food vendors. In Baïna[na], French group Le G. Bistaki invite audiences on an astonishing choreographic and musical journey. At the crossroads of circus and dance, Baïna[na] offers a timeless satire of our relationship with money and power. Visitors will be able to enjoy local food and delicacies at Inside Out Dorset’s Food Village, in partnership with Dorset Food and Drink and Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. There will be a bar and local food traders with plenty of delicious snacks and meals on offer.
Wild Woodbury will also host Soup and a Story, inviting audiences to partake in a shared meal and enjoy a performance by one of the artists commissioned by Activate Performing Arts for Inside Out Dorset 2023. Performers include 78-year old Bere Regis writer and poet, Ray Wills, known among the Travelling community as the Gypsy Poet and Ri Baroche, a non-binary/trans writer, performer, musician and drag artist based in Hampshire. Bournemouth-based puppeteer and illustrator Mahtab Grimshaw’s work is inspired by her story of moving from Iran to the UK and Tilly Ingram, whose practice is centred around our relationship with wildness, nature, and fear, explores these themes from her experiences as a woman with an invisible disability.
The festival’s Moors Valley site runs throughout the festival from 15th to 24th September. Moors Valley Country Park and Forest is managed by Forestry England and Dorset Council. This 800-acre site caters for visitors of all ages and will see spectacular art installed through the site. Kathy Hinde’s Chirp & Drift is a flock of illuminated instruments that chatter in a musical morse code, combining elements of birdsong, language and music. As wing-like bellows move, air is pressed through accordion reeds hidden within each ‘bird’, reminding visitors of the delicate and fragile state of the environment, and of our own health. This playful probe into interspecies communication ponders whether birds sing purely to enjoy making music. At the same site, Jane Pitt’s installation, Everyone says…, brings together a multitude of voices speaking a greeting and the word ‘tree’ in as many of the different languages spoken in the Moors Valley area as possible. Following face to face recording sessions at Moors Valley and in the surrounding area, the recordings will be played out digitally through speakers on stilts; mingling and interconnecting with each other and the sounds of the forest.
The finale weekend of Inside Out Dorset 2023 will be held in Weymouth on 22nd and 23rd September. This treat for all the family will see three giant dolls from Transe Express’ Poupées Géantes gliding magically through the crowd with the voices of three opera singers transforming the street into an opera house. This spectacular parade of light and music is complemented by Les Tambours creating a powerful sound, combining percussive traditions from around the world. If the past few years of Activate presentations in Weymouth are anything to go by, thousands of people will pack the streets and enjoy the mischievous drummers of Les Tambours as they weave themselves in and out of the giant dolls.
