Once a year, Le Salon Malta, a group set up by Miriam Calleja, Warren Bugeja and Alba Florian Viton organizes a non-profit making event which constitutes an innovative form of socializing, focusing on fostering the art of conversation as an antidote to the age of the smartphone. The three also organize smaller gatherings known as 'Salon Intimates' on an ad hoc basis.
Held at various venues, with different themes and leitmotifs, Le Salon/Is-Salott, aims to revive the great tradition of the 18th and 19th century Italian and French open salons which made the enlightenment possible, facilitated the intermingling of classes and sexes and served as an unofficial open university for women of the time. Le Salon Malta aims to be an intimate and animated ‘café on the move’, encouraging social interaction and the meeting and exchange of ideas, concepts and artistic expression.
Each year a different 'muse' officiates and it inspires the food prepared and the art (poetry, prose, music, acting etc) which is shared. This year the theme will be Dance, Movement and Fluidity and the event has been given the title As the Dust Settles. It will be set in the beautiful Villa Bologna in Attard.
A special theatre piece written by Miriam Calleja and directed by Alba Florian Viton will be staged in the gardens and then progress underground to the war shelters and the old well of the villa. Alba, who has recently completed an undergraduate thesis on the subject, specializes in creating theatre performances in constricted and small spaces. The original script is loosely based on a series of poems and celebrates the dance of creation, then follows Persephone's journey to the underworld as an unrequited dyad explores themes of nostalgia, wistful yearning, letting go and redemption.
As the Dust Settles will also feature a photographic exhibition centred on Dance-inspired images, while free tango, salsa and belly dancing classes will be held in the marquee outside, surrounded by the lush lawns, orange orchards and dolphin fountains of Villa Bologna.
Food has always been a key protagonist in these Le Salon events. Last year at Invisible Threads Le Salon dished out a series of delectable surprises, which sought to embody the primary emotions in a series of eight poems which formed the background to a series of tableaux vivants acted out in a private residence in Valletta. Thus deceit was interpreted as raw cacao balls with a parmesan centre. Coffee was pared and enhanced with salt; nostalgia, in turn was represented by caraway and lemon poppy seed cake and liqourice sticks. A pistachio, thyme honey and goji berry version of Halwa (tat-Tork), fashioned into a crenellated bastion and speared by fruit kebabs and featuring halved strawberries sprinkled with black pepper was created to interpret the verse: Qlub jimmiraw lejn is-sema. Gebel ilhom snin bla tama. (Hearts aimed towards the sky. Wretched, eternal rocks). More about last year’s event menu can be found at: lesalonmalta.blogspot.com.
Le Salon 2012, entitled Truly, madly deeply was about the love of art and the art of love. Live painting and the anthropology of love was broken up by a banquet of aphrodisiacal offerings and anatomically shaped desserts, all backed up by scientific research. On the other hand, this year the fare is all about movement and lightness, a frothy, aerated and effervescent take on high tea featuring mousses and wobbly jellies, cream puffs and meringues. Two Burmese sisters, also known in local circles as 'The Spice Kitchen' will be responsible for the menu.
The core essence of Le Salon however, is the opportunity for participants to share their artistic output, read out a piece of prose they have written, play an instrument, sing or dance to a ditty that has their limbs twitching, share an idea or a thought that has been tickling them pink, or whatever floats their boat.
Up until now, Le Salon has been a mostly intimate and low key event. In order to create an ambience of relaxed sharing numbers were kept small; indeed, there has so far always been a hostess, in centuries-old style, throwing open the doors of her private residence and sala nobile where past events were held. However, the organizers’ ethos has never been to be exclusive and this year the location of the event lends itself to opening Le Salon up to a new, larger audience, particularly because of the interest and demand past events have generated.
To find out more about this event go to www.facebook.com/LeSalonMalta, send an e-mail to [email protected] or call 9982 9836 or 7945 6647. Places are limited.
Alba Florian Viton on directing this year’s Le Salon theatre piece
Earlier this year, Miriam and Warren asked me to be involved in the main performance aspect of this year's Salon event, As the Dust Settles, based on the wide spectrum of interpretations that can fall under the definition of the theme 'Dance'.
During last year's Salon, Invisible Threads together with some other actresses, I had helped Miriam come up with performance pieces based on the interpretation of eight of her poems. This year we will be doing the same thing, except that Miriam and I have been working much closer on the creation of the performance pieces. She writes the poems and I turn the interpretation of these poems into images, which, once approved by Miriam, are then turned into performances.
The performers will include David Chircop, Tia Reljic, Naomi Said and me. Miriam and I have decided to base this performance on the choreography created by two individuals in a relationship and how, sometimes, such choreography comes to an unwanted end. However both are left with the hope of reuniting their dance steps in the future.
The first part of the performance will take place in the gardens with a full audience. The second part will take place inside the tiny rooms of the private war shelters underneath Villa Bologna. The performance will move from an underground shelter room to another with an audience of just 10 people at a time. Of course the pieces will be repeated until they are seen by all those who attend.
I am very excited about the spatial dynamics of this performance as it will finally be the chance to try out, here in Malta, my main areas of study. My main theatre training has come from Professor Nicole Bugeja, with whom I have been doing physical actor training for the past four years. I find that Bugeja's training has helped me a great deal in creating these physical images.
My B.A. Honours thesis was based on the study of a new form of theatre in Madrid called Micro Theatre. The special thing about this new form lies in the fact that micro plays only take 15/20 minutes and these short pieces are performed in very tiny basement rooms of about 15 square meters. Only around 10 audience members are allowed to enter a micro play at a time and they witness the action whilst standing against the walls of the tiny room. How more intimate can you get?
The shelter rooms at Villa Bologna are around this size so we have been able to base our work on this innovative form of theatre. However I wish to stress that it is only based upon this new form and does not fall completely under the requisites which would make it a micro theatre play.