This year’s edition of ŻiguŻajg, the arts festival for children and young people, will be featuring no less than 25 projects from 12 countries from three continents in a variety of creative forms ranging from theatre and film to dance and opera, circus and visual arts.
Over 150 artists will participate and approximately 20,000 people are expected to visit, out of which 8,000 will be schoolchildren.
The aim of every edition of ŻiguŻajg is to widen people’s interest in the creative sector through high quality projects which take on subjects which are of importance to our audiences such as the protection of the environment, the meaning of family and the effects of solitude.
ŻiguŻajg, to be held between November 17 and 26, will cater to the taste of many, especially children, who will be encouraged to express themselves through visual arts installations in the squares and other venues of Valletta.
Tag, Parade and the Velvet Gentleman and Aħn’aħwa jew m’aħniex? are three of the many productions being featured this year:
Tag (project by Pamela Kerr and Kostas Papamatthaiakis)
Find me. In a bluish, grey mist I stand just a boy, just a girl and alone. The memory of being held ashes in and out of the emptiness. I try to grasp it but it slips through my fingers. Five fingers. No, ten. Ten fingers and ten toes. Two eyes, a nose and a mouth, head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Whose body is this? half child, half adult. Can it walk? Can it dance? Can it love? hold me, hug me. No, don’t touch me. Touch my soul instead. Blow the world up into colour, remind me of the waves kissing the shore, the wind uprooting the trees and the child who watches it all in wonder.
Find me, remind me of that child, hold me. No, don’t touch me. But… to touch can be to give life. I’m too old for this.
Parade and the Velvet Gentleman (project by Ruben Zahra)
The show celebrates the 100th anniversary of the ballet Parade, premiered in 1917 by Sergei Diaghilev’s ballets Russes at the Théâtre du châtelet in Paris. This 20th century masterpiece features the music of Erik Satie scored to a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau with costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso.
This new version of Parade revisits the ballet on an interdisciplinary platform, embellishing the choreography with stop-motion animation, puppetry and projection dancing. The performance includes other works by Satie, known by his contemporaries as ‘the velvet gentleman’.
The programme includes some of his masterpieces for the piano such as Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes as well as works prefiguring the minimalism of Steve Reich and the incidental music of John Cage.
Aħn’aħwa jew m’aħniex? (project by Frolic Theatre Company)
I was about to tell you what you should do. You just pack, go to London and leave us behind. I was about to tell you to come and live with me. I was about to tell you to leave me in peace, bro.
I was about to tell you to meet these two brothers: Alex and Pete. One lives in England and the other lives in Malta. One is a business person and the other studies at Junior College. One knows how to cook, the other devours… bake, rather than cook, to be precise.
One knows, while the other wishes. Alex and Pete are different from each other. But when Michelle and Sandro are no more, both of them become orphans. Both of them need to get a grip of their lives. Both of them need to sort their lives out.It’s nothing but easy for two brothers distances apart to co-operate with each other. But together, maybe, they’ll sort things out.
For more information and tickets call 2122 3200 or visit www.ziguzajg.org