Next Door Circus Magazine Next Door Circus Magazine #2 | Page 30

The idea to start some kind of collaboration started in 2013. I had heard about
the new circus festival in Vilnius but had
never been there before. Luckily, I met
Audronis Imbrasas, the director of the
Arts Printing House, in Den Haag, the
Netherlands in 2012, during the dance
festival.
We should bring something to Vilnius…
The proposal to bring something to the
festival in Vilnius came from Audronis and
from the whole Arts Printing House team.
It was a great pleasure for me to share
and show what kind of circus we create
abroad. So I was very open to bringing
some circus colleagues and friends to the
festival. After some discussions, the Arts
Printing House and I decided to structure
the performaces as an open stage.
Adapting the Open Stage concept
The Rotterdam vision of an open stage
was born on May 2012 at Poortgebouw
in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Poortgebouw is a community of 30 people with
different nationalities and backgrounds
living together and organizing different
activities. Poortgebouw Open Stage is
an event that has taken place every two
months for more than two years, with
audiences of up to 100 people. It’s an
independent event where everything
depends on good will and the passion
to create, play and perform together.
The show is based on individual artists
and their solo/duo acts. That creates a
show of varied performances in many
different circus disciplines. Some acts are
completely finished and have been performed many times, some are still works-in-progress: Open Stage is totally open
for experimentation and research. That
gives more freedom and confidence to
the performers