Last week the Take Me Somewhere - the international, biennial festival and year-round sector support organisation, announced our return to the first live iteration of the festival since the pandemic. In anticipation of the festival taking over Glasgow from 13-28 October 2023, we’ve now announced the first programme of artists that’ll be presented on Tramway’s main stage this Autumn. The announcement focuses on three boundary-pushing, experimental and political works of scale by artists Carolina Bianchi (Brazil), Louise Ahl (Scotland), and Sonya Lindfors (Finland), ahead of the full programme announcement and tickets going on sale on Thursday 31 August.

Take Me Somewhere and Tramway jointly present the UK premiere of Part 1 of The Cadela Força trilogy: The Bride and The Goodnight Cinderella by Brazilian theatre maker, writer and performer Carolina Bianchi with collective CARA DE CAVALO - a performance lecture in which she explores themes of the body and rape culture. Presenting a work that was censored in Brazil, Carolina puts her own body within a performance art setting to confront and investigate the problematic process of documenting a rape within a patriarchal system of language that perpetuates violence against woman.

Commissioned by Tramway, the world premiere of Skunk without k is Sun is presented by Swedish born, UK based artist, choreographer and performer Louise Ahl - an experimental three act solo opera, that places curated scents, poetic audio description and sung operatic material at the heart of the work.

Creating an atmosphere that is immersive and sensory to create an opportunity to explore form, this work has been created with integrated access for blind and partially sighted audiences.

The UK premiere of One Drop by award winning Cameroonian-Finnish choreographer and artistic director Sonya Lindfors & working group is the third work to be announced - a new performance that is a speculative summoning, a decolonial dream, an autopsy of the Western stage and an operetta.

With a title that refers to the one drop rhythm which is a reggae style drum beat, alongside the one drop rule of the Race Separation Act created in the United States in the early 1900s, the work interrogates the ghosts of the Western stage and its entanglements and relationships to capitalism, coloniality and modernity.

With themes that explore accessibility, form and sensory engagement, alongside issues relating to capitalism, censorship, coloniality and violence against women, Take Me Somewhere exists to position Scotland as the place to create and experience radical performance. As a festival it presents some of the world’s most cutting-edge contemporary performance makers from local, national and international artists.

Speaking about the festival programme, Artistic Director LJ Findlay-Walsh said: ‘As we prepare to present our first in person festival since 2019, we’re excited to announce three Tramway main stage performances that benefit from our physical presence.

Whether its work that utilises the audience to confront and challenge, rousing performances that allow us to feel the transfer of dancer’s energy in our own bodies, or sensual works that explore scent, we’re delighted to showcase work from three strong voices from Scotland and across the globe that explore and play with what performance can be.’

The full programme for Take Me Somewhere Festival will be announced on Thursday 31 August. Sign up to our mailing list to be ahead of the curve.