The bOing! International Family Festival returns to Canterbury, Kent this August Bank Holiday celebrating its 5th birthday in style, with its biggest and best line up yet. This is a new one on me but I have to say it looks like fun!
Gulbenkian is a key part of the University of Kent’s Arts Centre offering innovative, engaging and high quality arts activities for and with the public, staff and students.
Internationally acclaimed companies from Australia, France, Denmark, Spain and across the UK perform in indoor and outdoor spaces big and small across the weekend for an anticipated audience of 15,000 people of all ages.
Highlights for 2018 include Teatret Gruppe 38 from Denmark, whose audience for Androcles and the Lion sit in hammocks to enjoy beautiful projections and storytelling.
Spanish company Aracaladanza return to Gulbenkian with their stunning show Constellations, which takes inspiration from the colours and patterns of artist Joan Miro, and Dyptik from Saint Etienne in France will be performing their dynamic outdoor dance D-Construction, with dancers caged and protected by a high wire fence.
bOing! has performances for the very small, including La Petita’s lovely Beatles for Babies, and for older children, such as Efren Pamilican Jr from Melbourne with his powerful hip hop, projection performance 9DIMES.
Frozen Light are graduates of the University of Kent and create brilliant performances for audiences with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). They return to bOing! in 2018 with a new performance Isle of Brimsker.
For the third year, bOing! will welcome one of the luminaria created by Alan Parkinson for Architects of Air. Katena is a maze of tunnels and soaring spaces inspired by Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, and an incredible experience enjoyed by thousands of festival goers each year.
(picture by John Owens)
The lively outdoor performances include a ‘Campervan of Love’, Bill & Bobby dancing in a bath, dj’s from The Netherlands making fries as they play your tunes, bangra drumming and the Bollywood Brass band, plus crazy hairdressers from Barcelona.
Workshops are an important part of bOing! and visitors to the festival in 2018 will have the chance to turn their hand to animation, puppetry, bangra drumming, crime scene investigations and boat-hat making.
On Friday 24 August, bOing! will hit the streets of Canterbury with Cohesion Plus performing bangra, plus the Bollywood Brass Band and a hip hop street battle all the way from Australia. Each year bOing! asks questions about theatre making for children andyoung people, and the 2018 bOing! Debate is around work for 8-12 year olds. The discussion will be hosted by ART(Y)31 Gulbenkian’s very own group of 8-12 year olds.
bOing! showcases the very best in theatre, dance, music, films created for all ages across Europe. bOing! is free to enter, with charges only on indoor performances, in order to create a brilliant day out for everyone, whatever age and experience of theatre.
