Dance Consortium and the Royal Concert Hall Nottingham present
Passagers by Canadian circus legends The 7 Fingers
A glorious fusion of contemporary dance, awe-inspiring acrobatics, extraordinary circus skills, live song and original music
Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Tuesday 5 & Wednesday 6 October 2021
On 5 & 6 October, Canadian contemporary circus company The 7 Fingers arrive at Royal Concert Hall Nottingham with their hit show, Passagers, an intoxicating mix of dance, physical theatre, acrobatics, circus skills and original music. Presented by Dance Consortium, this is the company’s first UK tour tor eleven years – and they will become one of the first international companies to arrive back on our shores.
Passagers plays with our timeless fascination with travel, both nostalgic and symbolic. A colourful and diverse group of nine strangers meet on board a train. Through the course of their journey, in the temporarily-suspended reality, they get to know each other. They begin to share their stories and reveal their emotional states through virtuoso acrobatics – vaulting somersaults, breath-taking trapeze, daredevil balances on the high wire – along with contemporary dance, narrative, song and an original soundtrack by Colin Gagné including two songs sung live.
The 7 Fingers’ seven co-founders – who include Passagers director Shana Carroll – set up the collective in 2002 after performing with some of the world’s best contemporary circus companies, including Cirque de Soleil. Their mission was to strip circus down to its thrilling essence and fuse it with dance, theatre, multimedia, music and storytelling. Since then, the company has gained a worldwide reputation for telling human stories with life-enhancing theatricality, warmth and humour.
Shana Carroll says: “Passagers was originally designed as an ode to travel – departure versus arrival, chance versus choice, familiar versus foreign, confinement versus border-crossing. Those themes have taken on a new meaning for all of us recently, with the very idea of departing or arriving feeling like a distant dream. Border-crossing is now fraught with risks, regulations and complications and confinement was the unifying theme for everyone. The show has now taken on a whole new dimension I’m not sure I could ever have imagined. I hope it will make us treasure the days of simple, liberating travel and celebrate a return to greater freedoms.”
Stephen Crocker, Chair, Dance Consortium, commented: “After one cancellation, two postponements and 14 months of empty theatres, I am delighted – and very excited – on behalf of Dance Consortium members to be announcing our next tour by one of the world’s leading performance companies. This is the first time we have presented The 7 Fingers company from Quebec and I can think of no better way of welcoming international artists back onto our stages than with their wonderful show Passagers – a beautiful homage to travel, love and the power of storytelling.”
Passagers’ nine performers are Lucas Boutin, Louis Joyal, Anna Kichtchenko, Maude Parent, Pablo Pramparo, Samuel Renaud, Brin Schoellkopf, Sabine Van Rensburg, and Marilou Verschelden.
LISTINGS INFORMATION:
THE 7 FINGERS – PASSAGERS
Tuesday 5 & Wednesday 6 October at 7.30pm
Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Theatre Square, Nottingham NG1 5ND
Tickets: £17.50 – £35 plus discounts for Royal Members*, Under 26s, Families, Groups and Schools www.trch.co.uk Box Office 0115 989 5555
*Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham Royal Membership scheme offers benefits including ticket discounts and exclusive pre-sales. For more information please visit www.trch.co.uk/membership
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