The Centre d’Investigació Escènica (C.I.N.E.) in Sineu / Spain. Biel Jordà in Conversation

After Biel Jordà studied performance management and playwriting at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona and circus skills at The Circus Space School in London, he founded, together with Marta Barceló, in 1998 the circus company Res de Res & En Blanc. “We did shows that were well received, such as Icars, Mara, Tempo, Maria?, and Septembre, and our company over time became quite successful in Spain as well as abroad.” In 2008, Biel also started teaching at the Escola Superior d’Art Dramàtic de les Illes Balears (ESADIB) in Palma de Mallorca, where he is currently Head of Studies. And in a third area of activities, in 2016 he founded, again with Marta Barceló, the Centre d’INvestigació Escènica (C.IN.E.) in Sineu. “We bought the space, at the beginning it was our rehearsal space, but then it has become a residency place that we are sharing with many companies and artists all over Europe.” Sineu is a small village with about 3.500 inhabitants, a very calm place, unaffected by the tourism that is unfolding on the Mallorcan coastline - artists from the sphere of circus and new artistic languages who usually come for about two weeks, can here fully focus on their work. 

“Each year in September, we are running the Ciclop Festival, a Visual Theatre festival with activities in the C.IN.E. and all over Sineu, focused on circus and new visual languages. Over the past 20 years, the reputation of circus performances has changed, it has become an appreciated art form, and there are now many artists and companies in Mallorca and Spain who put up wonderful shows.” And circus is also an art form close to the people, as can be seen, for instance, in performances by Guillem Vizcaíno who works with a wooden spinning top and a chord, evoking games that almost everybody in Mallorca knows. “The artistic media that come together in the circus are set design, performance, light and music, and some artists are now beginning to bring in audio-visual projections. At the moment, this is used more by companies in Northern Europe, but it will also come to us in Mallorca and Spain.

In its firm commitment to internationalisation and to interaction with artists and companies in other countries, C.IN.E. in 2019 co-founded the network Island Connect that originally comprised performing art creation centres located on islands in Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Ireland and Spain. The project received funding within the Creative Europe programme since 2020, when partners from France and Italy joined in, and in a next iteration this year, partners from Cyprus, Iceland, Norway and Portugal will come along. “The project has three legs of activity: first, the exchange in residencies within the partner network, where we all learn from the different perspectives and approaches that other companies bring in. Second, the research on insularity and environmental changes, where the relation of land and water also gets reflected. And the third leg is a co-creation where each partner institution sends one artist, and together they are setting out to create a joint show.”

Encompassing exchange, research and co-creation, the project partners meet once a year in a SpringLab to reflect on how the exchange of different views and approaches does enrich the work of each individual creation centre in the project. “All partners have something in common, but they have also different backgrounds and perspectives, and perhaps there are questions that we never asked, but colleagues from the North are bringing them up, and by doing so make us understand better where we live and work.” The SpringLab is also a capacity building workshop that aims to provide the partner companies with tools for the development and sustainability of their artistic projects, and here new digital media are becoming a major topic.

In a former cooperation with Katja Lebelt and teatreBLAU, Biel directed a new version of the opera Ba Ta Clan that was developed and in large parts rehearsed online from different locations via the Digital Stage. The opera was then shown in the small German towns of Seelow and Angermünde, in hybrid performances where live-streaming via the Digital Stage allowed an international public to take part in the play and the subsequent discussion.

“For our C.IN.E. contribution to gLOKALE 2024, we were looking for young artists who are already doing powerful performances, but do not have the structure to show their work abroad. So in our gLOKALE event in Sineu, on September 29, Pau Pasqual will show a solo performance, The Night Just Before the Forests, inspired by French author Bernard-Marie Koltès, that reflects Mallorca’s island character and illuminates changes in the ecosystem of the villages over the past years.” After the performance, there will be space for an ample discussion which is important for all C.IN.E. events. The feedback from different perspectives and different backgrounds helps the artists to better understand what they are creating.

“A vivid interaction with the audience, live and online, is the path art is taking forward. This could bring new possibilities to the circus: for me, it’s really important to give a role to the audience so they can bring in ideas, and even from different places in the world. I could imagine a place in the middle of nowhere, where a performance is taking place and nobody sees it on site, but thousands of people look at it on the internet and give their feedback. I want to research in these lines, and next year, we will start a new project that goes in this direction. I think something very new and very exciting is close to happen.”