HELIUM'24 PROGRAM:

KEHAKONE | Grete Gross (EE)

Kehakone is a warm embrace of a show. “At one point I figured that Kehakone is like a large playhouse, the kind made of blankets and sheets I used to build as a child. This piece in this space carries the same sense of safety and limitless possibilities and the first tools I have in hand to play with are aerial acrobatics, ceremonies, storytelling, music, joy and sincerity”, Grete Gross presents the performance.

Kehakõne translates as “body talk” or “body discussion” in Estonian. Another meaning could be “my dear body”. And it all starts from this kind feeling I have towards my body, holding it, sensing that there is so very much – stories, memories, life fitting into this body. It seems insane that so very much can fit in one person. And how do we fit into one room with all of these bodies full of stories?

September 9, 19:00

September 10, 19:15

Duration – 1 h 15 min

Age – from 10 years

Arts Printing House, Black Hall

Presentation of work in progress

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

ITCH | Teatronas (LT) 

Fear of death is among the most common causes of anxiety, often resulting in various indirect ways. The literary starting point for this performance is the book „Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death“ by psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom, which examines the fear of death through the lens of literature, philosophy and the experiences of I. Yalom’s patients. However, this literature is used only as an inspiration to create an absolutely new circus and theatre dramaturgy.

Anxiety, the rush to achieve something, social isolation, conflict – this is only a small part of the common symptoms of our time, which can actually hide the fear of death. In the current context, when death is so easily accessible and can happen unexpectedly to anyone from a close environment, with all the pandemics, war, ecological catastrophe and other sudden events, it is the right time to talk about this very natural fear. Especially when this anxiety is addressed not in an instructive way of expressing the main idea but by raising questions with the help of movement language. What is more, this topic was chosen for this period as it really affects EVERYONE or will affect in the future.

September 10, 18:00

Duration – 60 min

Age – from 12 years

Arts Printing House, Pocket Hall

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

GROCERIES | būda.collective (LT)

The contemporary circus performance Groceries explores the everyday life of a place well known to all of us – a simple Lithuanian grocery store. Although the foreground of the performance is the humoristic image of a grocery store with characters inside of it, the performance talks about post-traumatic stress disorders and people’s different viewpoints towards the same life situations.

For the contemporary circus and interdisciplinary art organisation, “būda.collective“ is an important identity of our country. The base of this performance is the memories of the creators themselves from their time at home; therefore, while visiting the Grocery store, you will encounter nostalgia and see a story about all of us! Physical theatre and circus disciplines are used during the performance such as juggling, object manipulation, and quick change technique.

September 11, 18:00

Duration – 35 min

Arts Printing House, Studio II

Presentation of work in progress

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

THE DIAPERS PROJECT | Marija Baranauskaitė – Liberman (LT)

Marija Baranauskaitė Liberman is an artist who created a show not for the audience of people, but for sofas, and who invited real ducks in the park to perform to the audience instead of her. This time she created a family. The need to use diapers not only for the baby but also for herself after giving birth deprived a lot of time for creativity. Therefore, she decided it was time to invite diapers as the director of this new project. Empowered and capable to lead and show what the new project is all about. Her entire family started writing songs that comforted them and contained the dream of comforting the entire world. Just imagine – there was a flying diaper… it soaked up all the s**t and everyone was fine once again.

September 11, 19:00

Duration – 1 hour

Age – from 14 years

Arts Printing House, Black Hall

Presentation of work in progress

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

PACEMAKER | Dissociee (FR)

Pacemaker is a rhythmic device that can accompany the various events in your life, and whose aim is to breathe movement into an organism that is sometimes overworked by routine. Designed for people suffering from complacency and whose heart rate reaches excessive levels of normality. Pacemaker throws its megahertz into the very heart of your home, on your floorboards or, failing that, on your living room carpet, in order to deregulate the flow of our morosities. Sending a heretical impulse to the centre of your viscera, the equipment stimulates without simulating the ventricle that articulates with the follicles of ridicule.

September 12, 18:00

September 13, 18:00

Duration – 30 min

Age – from 8 years

Arts Printing House, Pocket Hall

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

inTENSE | Taigi cirkas (LT)

Contemporary circus performance InTense is inspired by the principle of “force visualisation”, which expressions can be seen in architecture, human anatomy and the structure of society. In all these areas and structures expressions of stretching and compressive forces can be found, that are either in equilibrium and dynamically counterbalancing each other, or striving for balance and creating movement. Together, these forces develop an adaptive and resilient structure that bends rather than breaks (the best and most familiar example is our own body). This work explores being in balance, reaching tipping points and returning to a state of balance. When creating this piece, the authors drew inspiration from the metamodernism movement. A quote from the Metamodernism Manifesto: “…an unstable state between and beyond irony and sincerity, naivety and knowledge, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt, in pursuit of many different and elusive horizons. We must walk forward and sway!”

September 12, 19:00

Duration – 50 min

Age – from 8 years

Arts Printing House, Black Hall

Presentation of work in progress

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

HOW A SPIRAL WORKS | Art For Rainy Days (LT/LV)

How a Spiral Works is a contemporary circus performance where dance and acrobatics meet on a rope. While in today’s world, everything is happening so fast, in this piece one can find a great contrast – the performance is filled with care, fragile power and minimalism.

September 13, 19:00

Duration – 50 min

Age – from 8 years

Arts Printing House, Black Hall

Presentation of work in progress

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

SQUARE TWO | Tall Tales Company (NL)

Square Two is a journey of discovery into a wonderful world of codes and patterns. From the trees that grow in our street, the house in which we live in, to the path of life we follow, patterns and codes are the fundament of everything. Tall Tales Company and visual artist Don Satijn researched for two years how the underlying codes of each other’s work relate to the rest of the world. The result is a route through a striking building, in which static art comes alive in hypnotic living juggling sculptures. Juggling patterns are captured in abstract paintings. Square Two is a visual performance that offers the audience a completely new perspective on juggling, visual art and your own environment.

September 14, 12:00 and 15:00

September 15, 12:00 and 15:00

The performance is in English

Duration – 50 min

Age – from 8 years

The spaces of the Arts Printing House, meeting place – the lobby of the Arts Printing House (Šiltadaržio str. 6)

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

EXIT | Cie Circumstances (BE)

EXIT is an exciting and impressive physical circus and dance performance, where movement, partner acrobatics and balance board merge. Four individual disciplines in one collective language.

EXIT shows the meeting of four individuals walking one collective path. In a big, impressive installation with a revolving wall and floating doors, they move in and through space. They propel each other, walk, collide, climb, carry, balance and transform. They arrive and depart, meet and leave, appear and disappear.

September 14, 19:00

September 15, 19:00

Age – from 8 years

Duration – 50 min

Arts Printing House, Black Hall

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

GIREVIK | Roman Škadra (SK)

Girevik is a contemporary circus performance featuring a man and two hundred kilograms of kettlebells. In Girevik, the artist embarks on a physical exchange with iron weights. Responding to the objects’ proposals forces his body into a new shape with every movement. The artist travels through a territory defined by obstacles, constantly at the risk of reaching a dead end. Confronted with his vulnerability, he labours to keep the cast iron bodies moving. Precisely, gently, sincerely, he rearranges the heavy piles again and again. This fragile play results in an ever-expanding composition implying effort and collapse. Girevik invades the domain of the traditional Strongman archetype and wrestles it to submission. Deconstructed strength is unburdened by the stereotypes.

This work researches, what is strong, and what strong is in our nature, and explores the subtleties, revealing emotional, intellectual, and psychological dimensions. The piece challenges the historically hyper-masculine aura around the kettlebell and seeks alternative poetics of labour.

September 16, 20:00

September 17, 19:00

Duration – 60 min

Age – from 8 years

Arts Printing House, Black Hall

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai

STAMINA | Don Gnu (DK)

Do we endure to be loved – or do we love to be able to endure? Why do we really hang on for life? And how long can you keep going?

In Stamina, we see the meeting between two people. They want to get together quickly so they each do their best to maintain a good atmosphere and live up to each other’s expectations. But what happens in the encounter when we run out of stamina and can no longer bear to play along on the other person’s terms? The focal point of Stamina is the stamina that life demands from all of us. It is about the struggles it takes to live up to expectations and pressure, maintain a façade, endure resistance. And about what we can luckily find on the other side if we dare to let go. Stamina is a physical action theatre with subtle poetry and a good deal of exhaustion.

September 17, 18:00

September 18, 19:00

Duration – 50 min

Age – from 14 years

Arts Printing House, Pocket Hall

Tickets - https://bit.ly/HELIUM_2024_Bilietai