Commissioned by Bath Dance, ICIA Bath, DanceEast, DanceXchange, DIGM Urban Moves International Dance Festival and The Place, Border Tales brings Luca Silvestrini’s Protein Dance trademark mix of dance, verbal wit and live music to The Place, with which he has had a fruitful fifteen-year relationship, for seventeen nights (27 February - 15 March 2014). It’s one of the longest runs The Place has ever programmed.
Staged in-the-round to bring the audience closer to the action with an international cast of seven, Border Tales looks at multi-cultural living in the UK, at ‘them’ and ‘us’, at stereotypical thinking, at tolerance.
Composer Andy Pink and Columbian musician Anthar Kharana have created a live score which combines electronics, vocals and a range of traditional instruments from around the world, including percussion from the Middle East and South America, drums from Africa, Spanish guitar, hammer dulcimer from Thailand, flutes from China.
There will also be an accompanying photography exhibition, Between Here and Another Country by Stephen Morgan, who documented Protein’s Action Research Workshops at the Islington Centre for refugees.
Says Luca Silvestrini: “I’m dedicating Border Tales to everyone I’ve interviewed, talked to and worked with over months of research around notions of identity and multicultural living.
"I’ve travelled across England, Slovenia, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Palestine and India and learned that there’s a common, complex and unresolved space between people... between ‘them and us’, ‘me and the other’.
"This emotional, sometimes physical, sometimes socially awkward space is strongly influenced by a restless collision of cultures, traditions, religious views and political interests. I see this space in-between as a border, the outer part of all of us, a fragile partition that defines who we are, but that perpetuates a yearning to belong.
"I have nothing to teach or preach about, but I’ve been moved by the simple desire to share the many tales I’ve heard and experienced along the way.”
Tickets are £15 (£12 concessions), there are also two preview nights (Tue 25 & Wed 26 Feb) at £12, and a ‘pay what you can night’ on Mon 3 March.