Across a series of imagined swimming pools, arranged like the ascending levels of a retro videogame, a sequence of intimate monologues are gently teased out, all balanced on a knife-edge between revelation and delirium.
As our protagonists whisper their confessions through the voices and bodies of the four women onstage, the swimming pool itself is re-conceived as a kind of manmade utopia, a paradise in miniature, a site of ecstatic miracles and otherworldly beauty. Wrestling fearlessly with the particular demons of the early 21st century – rampant capitalism, toxic masculinity, internet boredom – Swimming Pools is a psychedelic, multilingual new show about desire and melancholia and how we might live together in the blinding brightness of the future.
``A beautiful experiment: meticulous, captivating``
``Swimming Pools offers us a choral work overflowing with creativity, fresh, original, different, and above all tremendously impactful and visual. It presents us with a vision of water as a metaphor for life and death by way of the body``
Created by Sleepwalk Collective
PERFORMED : Camila Vecco Haddad, iara Solano Arana, Nhung Dang and Rebeca Matellán
TEXTS : Sammy Metcalfe and the performers
ORIGINAL MUSIC AND PROJECTIONS: Sammy Metcalfe
CHOREOGRAPHY: The performers
MOVEMENT ADVISOR: Alice Tatge
LIGHTING DESING: Alex Fernandes
COSTUME DESIGN: Jorge Dutor
COSTUME: Jorge Dutor and Marta Pelos
STAGE DESIGN: iara Solano Arana
PRODUCED IN SPAIN: iara Solano Arana
PRODUCED IN THE UK: Sarah-Jane Watkinson / Outer Circle Arts
PHOTOS: La dalia negra
- Swimming Pools was co-produced by Teatro de la Abadia Madrid and Teatro Calderon Valladolid.
- It was supported by Gobierno Vasco, Graner Centre de Creacio, Battersea Arts Centre, using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and by Shift Key – Creative Europe.
- Support on tour: Instituto Etxepare.
Swimming Pools – Home Movie is the making of the stage piece, created during the months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
