Transforming Dorset’s landscape with extraordinary outdoor arts

5 Sep 2016 01:26 PM

Dorset’s biennial festival of outdoor art and performance returns with an array of exceptional experiences this September.

Inside Out Dorset promises extraordinary events in extraordinary places and has delivered some spectacular and iconic happenings from the very first festival in 2007.

The 2016 Festival features giant singing spinning sculptures; a sleepover with the RSPB; dazzling pyrotechnics and an unusual celebration of the autumn equinox.

Theatre companies, circus performers and artists are creating installations and performances for some of Dorset’s special places, alongside a programme of family-friendly circus and performance.

And all Inside Out Dorset events are free, meaning anyone from the local community or visiting the county can join the 85,000 people who have enjoyed the festival’s exciting outdoor arts since 2007.

Highlights for 2016 include:

• Chorus in Portland on 16 September and Weymouth on 17 and 18 September where giant kinetic sound and light sculptures will tower above the audience, tracing orbits of light in the sky.

• Kermiz in Gillingham on 18 September, a darkly-comic circus adventure for all the family from Le Cirque du Platzak featuring a man with a fascination for lawnmowers and lettuce, a temperamental Italian aerialist fighting with a Spanish toreador and an acrobat obsessed with staplers. 

• Wayfaring, an installation and performance linked to the Autumn Equinox by pyrotechnic performers And Now: on a hilltop near Littlebredy, Each day between 17 and 20 September, audiences are invited along pathways ancient and modern to discover the unexpected and to make their own contributions to the growing installation. Wayfaring culminates on the evening of 21 September, the autumn equinox, with a performance including movement, sounds, smells and the transformative power of fire.

• Hengistbury Headlines at Hengistbury Head 22 to 25 September, where eight artists and companies are creating installations and performances along a trail through the nature reserve, exploring the effects of climate change.

• Up in the Air at Harbourside Park in Poole on 24 September, a feast of outdoor contemporary circus performance against a dramatic background of sea and sky.  Acrobatics, high wires, a boat with its own mobile storm and an illuminating finale. 

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