EDINBURGH 2023: Bence Vági Guest Blog

Bence Vági, artistic director of Recirquel and director and choreographer of IMA (Pray) on the creative process of building an immersive experience.

Recirquel is a contemporary circus company based in Budapest, Hungary returning to the Edinburgh Fringe with IMA (Pray), which will also be the international premiere of the show. IMA is an immersive experience created for the purpose of initiating a meditative, visceral, and spiritual response from its audience.

The original idea of IMA was conceived during the pandemic, when I felt the need to create a show, from which people can gain energy, that can help them look deep inside themselves, and ultimately get back to life.

When I need to recharge, I always travel to distant places. I usually visit deserts, where in the vast space of emptiness, under the endless starry sky, I can feel how small we are. There I have the overwhelming experience of being connected to the entirety of the universe. The desert is also a place of inspiration that gives me the energy to look inside myself for real. I wanted to recreate this space and its energy for the audience and an immersive theatre experience felt to be the right format.

An important aspect of immersive theatrical work in general is that they take the distance between performer and the audience away, they allow the audience to be inside the reality of the performer. It is like immersing in the mind and the soul of the performer. IMA is performed by one acrobat-dancer, which was a very straightforward idea right from the start. He/she is leading the audience in this unique meditation, the audience is floating, flying in the air with him/her. We wanted to create choreography that does not rely on tricks, on the usual effects of circus that might for a moment give us the feeling of completeness by being astonished by the impossible. Instead, we wanted a form that would allow the audience to connect with the performer, so that he/she could take them on this flight into the midst of the universe. The fluid movements of the choreography take the audience to a state of mind where they are connected with the performer and feel like floating with him/her, while experiencing their own flight.

In the creation of the endless installation of the immersive IMA-space, light and sound played a key role. When entering and taking a seat on the mediation pillows or on the stools, we cannot really see the edges, the ends, the sides, even more so, during the performance we lose the sense of up and down, right and left, we lose sense of anyone sitting next to us or anywhere in the space. Millions of tiny light spots surround us in the darkness. They are lit from the outside by moving intelligent lights that change all the time, giving us the sensation of moving in the air, floating in the infinity of the universe, even though we are seated all through the show. We just allow the audience to enter themselves and create their own journey. IMA really allows the audience to visit places in their soul that they might have never visited before.

In 2018 we premiered My Land at the Edinburgh Fringe, in which we focused on the land, we were very much down on the earth, now we are taking a leap into the universe. For me as an artist, our work in the world of immersive performing arts experiences challenge the definitions of circus even more than our previous productions did. For us the borderline between circus and dance has disappeared completely.

IMA (Pray) will be performed at 12pm*, 1.30pm*, 3pm, 4.30pm, 6pm and 7.30pm (*Fri, Sat Sun only) in Assembly’s specially built venue Murrayfield Ice Rink from 4th – 27th August (not 15th or 22nd)

Booking Link: https://assemblyfestival.com/whats-on/ima

Photo credit: Bálint Hirling

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