met in India and THIS happened….

Early in the year 2014 the first Tifli festival was held in India. ASSITEJ India decided to offer a Next Generation opportunity at the festival and made an open call to the world. Two of the artists who applied and got a place in the programme were Tinna Grétarsdóttir, a choreographer from Iceland and Chantal McCormick, a circus artist from Ireland.

Chantal and Tinna (centre picture) during a discussion at the NG at Tifli in February 2014.

Now, two and a half years later, the two artists have co-created a performance together, aimed at an audience of 1+. The show is called Strange Feathers and has already been performed in Iceland and is currently on tour in Ireland. The show brings together the artists’ different skills and stands as a wonderful example of international collaborative work.

This is what the artists themselves have to say about their encounter in India and the first steps of their collaboration:

The Next Generation meeting in India has become extremely important for us on a personal level since it sparked a collaboration between Fidget Feet (Ireland) and Bird & Bat (Iceland).  Although we are neighbours in a global sense it is not likely that we would have met and certainly not have gotten such a good time to get to know one another. A big part of this connection we made is due to the atmosphere that was created in NG Delhi. Spending almost all waking hours together with our fellow NG-ers talking, laughing, discussing, eating and dancing we got a good idea of how everyone worked, what their artistic view was and how they saw their own future. So although we had only known each other for 7 days we were pretty sure that a collaboration between us would be a very good idea.

By Vigdís Jakobsdóttir and Tinna Grétarsdóttir

From the performance Strange Feathers, co-created by Tinna and Chantal, premiered in Reykjavík September 2016