From 16 to 25 September, artists will respond to Dorset’s natural and cultural heritage in the Inside Out Dorset festival at locations including Weymouth, Poole, Hengistbury Head and Portland along the coastline, Littlebredy on the South Dorset Ridgeway and Gillingham.
Artists Mandy Dike and Ben Rigby—who work together as And Now—will create Wayfaring, an installation on a hilltop near the village of Littlebredy which explores the tensions and balances in a contemporary landscape rich in evidence of early human occupation, culminating on the evening of 21 September with a performance including "movement, sounds, smells and the transformative power of fire".
Hengistbury Headlines from 22 to 25 September features the work of eight artists and companies on a performance trail through the nature reserve at Hengistbury Head, home to more than 500 plant species and 300 types of birds.
Arbonauts—Helen Galliano and Dimitri Launder—will create The Soaring Sky, a coastal walk through a sung performance of birdsong created by local singers responding to the calls of migratory and endangered birds on the site.
Jony Easterby’s Remnant Ecologies, co-commissioned by the RSPB, is a series of sound installations containing fragments of British birdsong triggered by algorithms, the wind and sun, and birds themselves. Ferdinando Bradridge Byrne’s Hides places two animated bird hides alone on a cliff to explore themes of migration, refuge and the need of shelter.
In Gobbledegook Theatre’s Cloudscapes, director Lorna Rees provides a place to cloud-gaze. Kate Paxman’s Overture is a sound installation outside a former coastguard's hut. Romantic Botanic is an promenade theatre piece for small groups. The Miraculous Theatre Company uses poetry and science to delve into the secret love life of plants.
Pebble Gorge’s You’re Getting Warmer is a digital treasure hunt-style adventure for 7- to 11-year-olds and their families, who have to hunt for clues on a mission to save the Marsh Warbler and stall the Three and a Half Degree gang. Sweetshop Revolution’s Sally Marie sets her dance work Tree in woodland on the site with four male dancers.
During Hengistbury Headlines, there will be a chance to take part in the RSPB's Big Wild Sleepouts on the nights of 22, 23 and 24 September.
The Festival opens on 16 September with Ray Lee’s Chorus at Portland before moving to the seafront at Weymouth Pavilion on 17 and 18 September, featuring kinetic sound and light sculptures above the audience.
International circus collective Le Cirque du Platzak brings Kermiz, a darkly-comic adventure with eastern European folk music, to Gillingham on 18 September with characters that include a man with a fascination for lawnmowers and lettuce, a temperamental Italian aerialist fighting with a Spanish toreador and an acrobat obsessed with staplers.
Up in the Air on 24 September features contemporary circus against a backdrop of sea and sky at Harbourside Park in Poole. Shows include Circus Geeks’ Project_Vee, Acrojou’s All At Sea, World Beaters’ Spark, The Bullzini Family’s Equilibrius and Carré Curieux’s Petit Frère.