Arbonauts

Founded in 2012, Arbonauts create site-specific performance at the meeting point of theatre, installation and dance, working with movement, site and sound. Arbonauts is a multi-disciplinary company with an experimental and collaborative core. All their work is made in collaboration with others - in combination with professional and community performers. Partners and supporters indicate the breadth of their creative ambition, including: Arts Council England, British Council, Estuary Festival, Goethe Institut, Inside Out Dorset, Latitude Festival, Metal, Royal College of Art, Shoreditch Town Hall and Southwark Council. 

Their productions include Biped’s Monitor, presented at dusk in the grounds and trees of Nunhead Cemetery and The Desire Machine, a 360° performance installation created 10m under the Thames at the Brunel Museum (shortlisted for an Off West End Theatre Award). In 2016 they were commissioned to create The Soaring Sky, a walk-through performance of birdsong along ½ km of coastal path, sung live by 25 local singers. 

In 2020, Arbonauts were commissioned by Metal and Estuary Festival to create SILT - an outdoor, climate-responsive performance created for a tidal pool on the Essex coast and performed live in September 2021 in the water by a group of community performers made up of open water swimmers from London, Kent and Essex. The core creative team included Choreographer Becky Namgauds and Sound Artist Lee Berwick. 

Drawing on the challenge of rising sea levels, SILT re-imagines how humans might evolve beyond an impending climate disaster with a community of people who dwell in water. Participant feedback included: 

“This experience has helped my confidence to soar, given me faith in my body’s ability to move and be strong.”

“If a group of total strangers comes together and is guided with such kindness, openness and generosity, something truly amazing can happen. SILT has reminded me of community in its purest form.”

“I learnt about how collaborative performance art is made. I learnt about soundscapes, about tidal pools, silt, the ocean and the estuary. I learnt that age means nothing.”

Helen and Dimitri say: “We found a creative release in making work in which the body and the landscape are an innate part of our devising and rehearsal process. Our global sense of threat and uncertainty - the horrors of both the pandemic and extreme weather - gave us an even stronger need to create work with community performers in a generous and expansive way. Creating the physicality with the participants has been a joy and a privilege - to work with bodies of different ages, shapes, strengths and experiences - this process has mirrored a hope in the resilience and adaptability of humans.”

Arbonauts are building on the success of SILT in 2021 to work with Estuary Festival on a new site-specific performance - SALT - to be performed live at dusk in a tidal pool on Concord Beach, Canvey Island. In the shadow of a sea wall, alongside the rhythm of daily rituals and tides, we follow the original SILT group, almost 4 years later.

They will continue to work with the same performers from 2021, who through trust, joy and creativity have formed a community, a support network, a group of friends. They will be joined by recent graduates from East 15 Drama School BA Acting and Physical Theatre, forming an intergenerational pool of performers.

Directors Helen Galliano and Dimitri Launder will work closely with Choreographer Becky Namguads and Sound Artist Lee Berwick - who will mix an epic, visceral soundscape - using recorded sounds from along the estuary - played live during the performance. 

Photo credit: Nina Photography