See images from our most recent performances of
When You Light A Candle, You Also Cast A Shadow... HERE
Company Carpi: "We are very proud to have recently completed our tour of venues in the North West of the UK with our One Dance UK Award nominated dance theatre piece When You Light A Candle, You Also Cast A Shadow.
Thank you to everyone who came along and supported us and for all the lovely feedback we've had about the performances!
Watch out for announcements coming soon about what we're doing in 2024...
It's going to be a busy year!"
Bettina & Gary, November 2023
In 2023 we performed to capacity audiences at:
Chester Cathedral
the Whitworth, Manchester
The Crypt Hall, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral
Hale Hall for The Arts Centre Edge Hill University
Pyramid Arts Centre, Warrington
This has been our first regional tour, thanks to generous funding from
ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND, DANCE CONSORTIA NORTH WEST and other sources and a heap of support from our host venues and hosting arts organisations,
and from our friends & partners in the performing arts and elsewhere.
When You Light A Candle, You Also Cast A
Shadow
Nominated for One Dance Awards 2022
"It's like taking a bath - in art!"
Alice Billen, Candle String Quintet
When You Light A Candle, You Also Cast A Shadow is a celebration of nature and our climate, it is also a warning about the precarious state of our beautiful planet and habitat.
The piece was performed in our 2023 Tour by our trio of dancers -
Lauren Tucker, Paige Lyon, & Daisy Belle Howell, with Jess Bennett joining us on our Hale Hall date - with music performed live at every venue by the specially assembled Candle String Quintet who are drawn from the best orchestras in the North West (including The Hallé, BBC Symphony Orchestra & Manchester Camerata) with the help of 'fixer' & cellist Lucy Arch.
The piece crucially also features a specially commissioned poetry cycle
by the Costa Award winning writer Mary Talbot,
and a bespoke art installation sympathetic to every performance venue specially commissioned by the fine artist Megan Bowyer.
Plenty of pictures of most recent dates to follow!
COMING SOON
from Company Carpi...
Amongst other things...
We will soon be launching our exciting brand new original
anthology opera (with dance, of course!) which is titled:
DISUNITED JUKEBOX
A 21st Century Opera
A collective community "cave painting" about the
precarious times in which we live...
in the form of an opera
Featuring:
An expansive cast of opera singers,
musicians from the best orchestras in the UK,
and a VERY surprising cast of guest librettists...
Performances coming Spring 2024...
Watch this space!!!
Like everyone, since 2020 we've had our trials, in particular having to postpone two major commissions... but we are back.
In November 2021 we were able to go ahead and build and perform the first of those commissions, for Lancaster Arts, a work for a trio of dancers and live string quintet titled When You Light A Candle, You Also Cast A Shadow
with its central topic of "climate celebration, amid climate crisis".
We followed this in June 2022 with performances at the beautiful
Warrington Museum & Art Gallery and in March 2023 at Chester Cathedral,
and we were thankfully able to tour the piece even further afield to three more venues in the North West UK in 2023.
The second of the two aforementioned commissions that were postponed
in 2020 is finally, in 2023, back in the works. We've raised the funds, assembled the casts, booked the dates... and we'll be on stage with it in Spring 2024... our collective community anthology opera entitled...
DISUNITED JUKEBOX
Watch this space!
With love & thanks,
Bettina & Gary
"COMPANY CARPI make innovative, inspirational
and highly creative dance theatre infused with
a love of literature and the written word"
MICHELLE HODGSON
Director of Huddersfield Literature Festival
COMPANY CARPI is a contemporary dance, dance theatre and live music venture created by dancer and choreographer BETTINA CARPI and composer and producer GARY LLOYD.
Whilst we have worked together for many years the company was launched to coincide with our first true and full-scale company production, a dance theatre adaptation of the prose poem THE MIRROR OF LOVE by the highly celebrated author and comic book creator ALAN MOORE. Its premiere performances, funded by Arts Council England and
other sources, took place in September 2017.
In April 2018 we ran research and development of a new performance piece based on the book KNOTS by the revolutionary psychiatrist R.D. LAING, featuring four actors, seven dancers and five musicians from UNIVERSITY OF CHESTER PERFORMING ARTS DEPT.
In June 2018 in conjunction with the performance artist CLAIRE HENDERSON DAVIS we created another Arts Council England funded performance piece engaging with the Syrian refugee crisis titled TAKE REFUGE UNDER MY SHADE which was performed at Chester's new theatre STORYHOUSE and at the EDINBURGH JUST FESTIVAL.
The piece featured orchestral music recorded with the Scottish Session Orchestra at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.
In 2019 we launched two exciting and very different new works - an opera with dance based on Mary & Bryan Talbot's Costa Award Winning DOTTER OF HER FATHER'S EYES extracts of which were performed at DUBLIN WORLDCON, and THE STUMBLING BLOCK based on the poetry cycle by the amazing BRIAN CATLING which was performed at the CHESTER MUSIC FESTIVAL at STORYHOUSE and at THE ARTS CENTRE EDGE HILL UNIVERSITY.
MORE TO FOLLOW>>>
View the orchestral piece composed by GARY LLOYD as a memorial for his friend and collaborator the late great Scottish novelist IAIN BANKS:
A day out not so long ago to see and record with the lovely Alan Moore in his home town of Northampton.
Alan, Bettina and Gary:
