Brindabella
Premiered Melbourne
December 5th 2007
Choreography:
Phillip Adams and Miguel Gutierrez
Composer: David Chisholm
Lighting & Set Design: Bluebottle
Costume Design: Doyle Barrow
Performers: Tim Harvey, Derrick Amanatidis, Brooke Stamp and Luke George
Musicians: Lachlan Dent (Cello),
Nic Synot (Double Bass), Timothy Phillips (Percussion)
Short video promo. Click here.
Synopsis
Brindabella is a baroque fantasia, a spiritual and strange underworld of forest inhabitants adapted from the French folktale Jean Cocteau's La Belle et le Bête. Brindabella re-imagines this narrative across both genre and period.
Brindabella recasts the Beast into three roles, splintering the central male figure of the story in order to explore the many dimensions of masculinity. Brooke Stamp performs a gender ambivalent 'Belle' in this heavily testosteroned world. Set design by Bluebottle simultaneously evokes a baroque forest and playground, complimented by incredible costume design by Doyle Barrow.
The score by composer David Chisholm evolves from baroque to garage band in intensity and aesthetic.
Brindabella commences in the style of a baroque salon performance, featuring
staged, flamboyant choreography and decorative cult-like theatrical episodes. Shifting abruptly, the viewer is transported to a forest and the stuff of fairy tales, with a fleeting balletic narrative of a lost 'Belle', replete with howling wolves.