World premieres, live chickens and interactive art brings Leeds to life for the 2016 Compass Festival…
Returning to Leeds this Friday, 17 artists will bring new and re-imagined live artworks to locations across the city from 11-20 November including shopping centres, a library, market and museum as well as streets and parks in the city centre.
The programme this year includes some engaging work: a duo of pieces from performance specialists Lone Twin including a world premiere – Last Act of Rebellion; fortune telling chickens at Leeds Corn Exchange; WARMTH – a mobile sauna – an old horse box that doubles as a performance space; Personal Shopper, the culmination of three years work at Leeds’ iconic Kirkgate Market; and Playing Up, run by children for families at Leeds City Museum.
Specially commissioned to be part of this year’s Festival is Last Act of Rebellion by Lone Twin, which will be performed at the Howard Assembly Room. Audiences of this world premiere will see the artists duet, dance and react to a playlist of songs selected for their cultural significance from some point in the last 20 years, the lifespan of the company.
Lone Twin also have created a new version of an acclaimed previous work especially for Compass Festival. Spiral is a 7-day long interactive work in which the duo draw a spiral onto a map of Holbeck, creating a route that goes through homes, offices, parks and streets. The artists will walk this route from Friday 11- Thurs 17 November engaging with local people and locations, collecting ephemera, large and small, donated by those encountered. Spiral will culminate in an exhibition and open to all homecoming celebration at Slung Low’s HUB, Bath Road on 17 November, from 5pm.
Typifying the Festival’s approach to nurturing new talent is the artistic debut from performance designer Bethany Wells. WARMTH – a mobile sauna was commissioned by Compass and is Wells’ first public work. Located at The Art Hostel, WARMTH is a fully functioning mobile sauna and arts space – adapted from a horse trailer. The traditional, timber lined room will host performances at key points during the Festival and also will be available outside these times for people to visit for relaxation and contemplation.
Artists Katie Etheridge & Simon Persighetti have worked with Compass Festival since 2013 to develop Personal Shopper, a project located in Leeds’ iconic Kirkgate Market. 2016 sees the culmination of the project and a resulting collection of tours that have been created by the artists, in collaboration with the market stall holders and customers, to tell their personal tales and experiences of the changing spaces. The tours are also assembled in a new publication: Personal Shopper: A Market Mis-Guide produced especially for Compass Festival.
Check out the full Festival programme on www.compassliveart.org.uk and for updates follow @CompassFestLDS on Twitter and Facebook