Our commissions have produced stunning work over the years.
Recent Commissions
our commissions bring out the best in an artist.
2021 Hangwire Microcommissions
These commissions will allow each artist to create new work in the coming months.
When our vibrant contemporary circus sector re-opens, it will thrive with innovative new work. We can’t wait for you to see these projects and others come to fruition in our rejuvenated building, which will open in late summer.
Hangwire is supported by Arts Council England.
“Whether flinging each other across the stage like frisbees or pausing to reflect on their past, they are constantly engaging, seriously attractive and occasionally moving. Super.”
– The Stage
Throwback: Commission and subsequent success
We loved Throwback so much and we knew it deserved a wider audience. With a couple of cast changes (guys, could you really not get out of those really prestigious tours with Cirque du Soleil or at the Southbank?!) and a couple of national partnerships (Underbelly and National Centre for Circus Arts), Throwback was ready to return for a three week run in in a 600 seat Spiegeltent at the Circus Hub at the Edinburgh Festival.
Jacksons Lane produced Throwback in Edinburgh between 3 – 22 August 2016, before delighting audiences at the Shambala Festival, the Greenbelt Festival, and returning triumphantly home to Jacksons Lane as part of the London International Mime Festival in February 2017.
Cast in 2016: Tom Ball, Craig Dagostino, Sammy Dinneen, Lj Marles, Niamh O’Reilly, Ulrike Storch.
meta by Gandini Juggling
To celebrate our 40th birthday we knew we wanted to commission one emerging company (Silver Lining) and one established company. We started thinking who, in an ideal world, if logistics and money were no barriers, would be our number one choice. Of course that choice would be Gandini Juggling: world-renowned, acclaimed beyond measure, globally touring. They have created work for Sydney Opera House, the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House, you name it. It wouldn’t be possible for Jacksons Lane to commission a new piece of work from those geniuses at the Gandinis, surely?
We have never been so happy to be wrong.
Gandini Juggling’s meta, commissioned by Jacksons Lane
meta was a show about making shows. An elliptical reflection on entertainment.
In the 1990s the Gandinis made a series of experimental pieces with Choreographer Gill Clarke that were performed at Jacksons Lane. For this commission they revisited those pieces with 6 jugglers and 3 dancers, for a specially-commissioned show that features complex juggling, text, ballet dancing, hammers, nudity, tables and a comedy sketch.
The show was bursting with concepts and commentary about form, style and substance. They explore this dissection of things, about dwelling deeper into the anatomy of a show.
meta saw the Gandinis simultaneously looking back to the past and forward to the future.