Media love for The Doors Project
November 12, 2011
The Doors Project headlined the 3rd Edition of Festival Lilliput, a multi-disciplinary, site-specific festival that celebrates an architectural particularity of Barcelona: the tiny, ground floor kiosks that were carved into the stairwells of residential buildings during the city’s heyday. La Perfumería de Bonsuccés, the hosiery store I emerge from at the beginning of our performances, is one of these historic stairway kiosks.
As part of the festival, The Doors Project premiered two commissioned works:
– Portas (Doors, in Catalan), which takes the audience of festival-goers and passersby on a journey from tiny to big: from the stairwell of a mini-hosiery kiosk into the larger Plaza de Bonsuccés, and a columned archway that opens onto a park. Portas responds to the bustling pedestrian environment of the Plaza de Bonsuccès by calling attention to different threshold spaces of doorways, stairwells, and archways, questioning “thresholds” of beginnings and the transitions of passage in corridors of activity. Both spoken word and movement elements of this performance also reflect on Barcelona’s then-current “doorway moment” between the rise of the 15-M protest movement and the upcoming national elections. Created and performed in collaboration with Paolo Cingolani, Sergio Herrero, and Marta Martínez de Aragón.
– T’estimo, porta! / The Doors Project + quioscos d’escales (Roughly, “I appreciate you, door! / TDP + stairway kiosks), a door-to-door, kiosk-to-kiosk dancing tour throughout the winding streets and medieval architecture of old Barcelona. Created and performed in collaboration with Marta Martínez de Aragón, with special appearances by Sergio Herrero.
The Doors Project was featured in every major news publication of Barcelona, including page one of the widely read Guía del Ocio; we were also featured in multiple talk and news show appearances on TV.
Many thanks to Festival Lilliput director and producer Patricia Ciriani, press director Agnès Font, La Perfumería de Bonsuccès shopkeeper Montserrat Prats (3rd generation kiosk-keeper), and The Doors Project backers on Kickstarter.
Here’s a sampling of some of the press from The Doors Project in Barcelona.
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EL PAIS:
El País, the Spanish-language paper of note, calls our performance “la gran apuesta” (roughly, what they’re putting all their chips on) in the 2011 edition of Festival Lilliput. See the penultimate paragraph, below.
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20MINUTOS:
20minutos is the free newspaper distributed to commuters in Barcelona. It came out the morning of our performance with this photo of Ashley Macqueen and me by Ned Myerberg. Journalist Maica López recommends our special kiosk-to-kiosk tour that evening where we danced in doorways, thresholds, and stairways throughout the narrow streets of old Barcelona.
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EL PERIODICO:
Columnist Edwin Winkels used Festival Lilliput to talk about the changing sociological, funding, and neighborhood landscapes of Barcelona; he prominently featured The Doors Project and called us “the main attraction” of the festival. He also spoke about the project’s inspiration in the 15-M protest movement in La Puerta del Sol, Madrid.
Photo above by Edwin Winkels, in Montserrat’s beautiful kiosk on Thursday afternoon, after my first press conference. Note the many legs with colorful hosiery.
Here in the photo with The Doors Project team in Barcelona: Paolo Cingolani, the dancer I collaborated with in our kiosk performances in Festival Lilliput; in the background are Marta Martínez and Sergio Herrero Serradilla having a doorway moment.
–Marta danced and co-created the movement with me for the special kiosk tour we led on opening night, mentioned above; she was also my trusted assistant and “outside eye” throughout the creation process of Portas. Sergio, whom you may recognize from the photos on our Kickstarter page, was also an integral part of the co-creation process and accompanied our dance with spoken word and text at the end of each performance, underneath the archways in La Plaza de Bonsuccés. He and his mischievous megaphone also played a large role in our kiosk-to-kiosk tour.
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EL PUNT AVUI:
Journalist María Palau said we prescribed “pills” of dance (to combat budget cuts and economic crisis) using doors as metaphors for human relationships. Photo below by Andrei Puig captures the moment on opening night when I danced out our kiosk door onto the street, only to run into some lovely customers on their way in to buy hosiery. We got to share a very fun and spontaneous doorway moment (and a couple of gleeful “Olés”!).
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LA GUIA DEL OCIO, cover story and article:
La Guía del Ocio, roughly equivalent to Time Out in NYC, featured a picture of The Doors Project for their cover story, paying homage to “all things small.” They understood doorways as the “contact space” between the public and the private: an integrated gateway to the tiny, ground floor family-owned businesses carved out of the stairways and entrance halls of many residential buildings throughout central Barcelona.
(Photo of Ashley Macqueen and me by Ned Myerberg.)