Jacksons Lane celebrates the outsider in its spring 2019 season, giving a platform to marginalised and counter-culture voices from across the globe.
In its most ambitious season yet, the north London arts centre presents more than a dozen contemporary circus productions and a dozen more works of visual theatre and experimental dance, alongside eight irresistibly fun family shows.
Jacksons Lane’s circus programme ranges from A Taste of Berlin by Outer Circle Cabaret, a riotous sample of the cabaret scene’s sordid underbelly performed by Berlin’s finest, to Patfield & Triguero’s Gibbon, a wickedly funny juggling feast co-produced by Gandini Juggling, and Jessica Andrade’s The Brownie Club, a Jacksons Lane co-production combining striking aerial circus with spoken word to candidly explore the pressures faced by women of colour.
Birmingham-based Stan’s Cafe present The Capital, one of four London International Mime Festival shows at Jacksons Lane. This non-verbal work, performed on two moving travelators, depicts the feeling of being left behind in the big city.
In February, Justice in Motion’s Bound uses dance, theatre and aerial acrobatics to tell the unheard stories of three people – a cleaner, construction worker and sex worker – trapped and desolated by modern-day slavery; and in March, Joss Arnott’s postgraduate dance company Emergence performs a double bill partly inspired by the women’s suffrage movement, choreographed by Arnott and Phoenix Dance Theatre’s Sharon Watson.
Jacksons Lane’s reputation as a breeding ground for exceptional circus and a host of the finest-quality family theatre combine this spring, with three family circus shows taking to the stage: Lost in Translation’s Hotel Paradiso, playing throughout February half-term, is a madcap aerial and juggling extravaganza for 3- to 103-year-olds; The Gramophones’ Tarzanna is a gender-flipping aerial theatre tale; and Hoopa Clique’s Chores is a charming acrobatic production fresh from a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Adrian Berry, Jacksons Lane’s Artistic Director, says: “This season we’ve pushed the boundaries artistically and culturally, more so than ever, through the highly physical mediums of circus, dance and visual theatre. We’re both celebrating and embracing what Bowie called the ‘kooks’: outsider art personified on our stage, rebel themes, and protagonists that defy convention.”
Jacksons Lane, 269A Archway Road, Highgate, N6 5AA, Friday, January 25, to Saturday, June 15. Details: 020 8347 2415 jacksonslane.org.uk
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