Time for the Skåne Circus Festival!
On September 6 — 15 it will be Circus Festival in Lund, Malmö and Skåne ---- Lina B. Frank, what are you most looking forward to these days?
- I am so looking forward to showing the breadth that exists in circus arts now! It will be classic circus performances mixed with poetic wonders and grand French outdoor spectacle. This is something completely new and unique for Skåne. It feels great to put Skåne on the map and work both with putting together the artistic content and working with Visit Skåne on destination development.
What can the Danish audience expect from the festival?
- A great variety. One goal of the festival is to show many different kinds of circus experience. We have African acrobatics with message at the City Theatre in Lund, baby-circus, grand French outdoor spectacle with Basinga at Mårtenstorget, Cirkusfest at Lindangen and in Årröd outside Kristianstad, Circus parade through Malmö and a Villaggio Chapiteaux, a tent village as a circus area that we are establishing as a new concept.
What does it mean for Cirkus Syd to host the festival?
- It means a lot to Cirkus Syd to do this for the people and the circus sector in Skåne. We show both our capacity and the challenges that exist in the absence of vital infrastructure within circus culture in Skåne. It's a very satisfying challenge.
You have previously told the Future by Lund network about Cirkus as a good breeding ground and testing ground for innovation. Do you have the opportunity to try something during the week in Lund and Malmö?
- Many of the performances contain artistic innovation, new approaches such as, for example, doing circus with skateboarding. Even structurally, we will find new solutions, for example, to rig up a 50-meter-long rope dance stand at Mårtenstorget in Lund and Malmö by building the foundations of a tent village that will grow in the next 10 years. It involves collaboration between different sectors, practices and regulations in order to achieve something completely out of the ordinary.
What would be your dream collaborations going forward to further develop the circus industry? What areas of the circus need to be innovated?
- One of my dreams is a larger collaboration with architects and/or the product design industry, I see endless possibilities in the borderland between circus and architecture and product design. Just watch the trailer from Apparat with the company Kapsel touring the municipality of Lund during the festival!