THE PLACE OF UNIQUE CREATURES.

The Place of Unique Creatures will be a four-day summer workshop running from 30 June to 3 July for children aged 6 to 12 who would like to join us in imagining and creating a place of their own.

Sometimes we imagine bodies with wings, shimmering skin, enormous legs or the bodies of sea animals... Creatures that hide beneath stones, that sleep in caves, that crawl, float, leap or change shape. What if we could invent a being of our own? How would it move? What sounds would it make? What would it feel like to the touch?

The Place of Unique Creatures offers a space in which participants can explore using their bodies, movements and imaginations, discovering new sensations and new ways of being in the world.

As always, we will start from the idea of a shared refuge: an intimate space built together as an act of care and imagination in relation to the outside world. We want to think of these places as territories where we can invent alternative ways of living together and imagining collectively.

Through play, fantasy and shared adventure, we will set off on a journey towards new places and new possibilities. We will engage all five senses, bringing out the creature that lives inside each of us. Who says such creatures only exist in fairy tales? After all, isn’t the reality we inhabit magical enough in itself?

Along the way, we will create our own masks and use fabrics, paint and a range of materials to transform the space into a collective dreamscape where new forms of life and coexistence can appear. Through movement and theatrical creation, we will gradually compose a fantastical form of dance theatre populated by singular creatures.

Little by little, the group will build a living, dreamlike landscape: a community of unique creatures creating their own ecosystem, customs, hiding places and stories. A place where they can pretend to be something else and perhaps discover new ways of being together.

Chimenea de dos mujeres girando is a collective founded by Jara Arellano and Zoe Guidotti, artists and dancers who will facilitate the workshop through dance, bodily exploration and improvisation.

While dance lies at the heart of their practice, they see art as a hybrid territory where movement, literature, film, painting, photography and theatre coexist, nourishing their work and helping them to create distinctive worlds of their own. Their practice occupies a space bordering on play, imagination and collective creativity, eschewing academic conventions in favour of creating receptive spaces where the body can transform, invent and dream. Their principal aim is to make dance accessible to all and create safe environments where people can connect through freedom, attentive listening and the absence of judgement.