Synopsis

Brindabella

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.

"A wildly original and startlingly successful masterpiece." - Jessica Thompson, Dance Australia

"BalletLab's Brindabella does a fine job of drawing together design, music, staging and dance into an intriguing whole." - Jez Hunghanfoo, Arts Hub

"The four dancers gradually strip away their social dress, even their gender, until they are four possessed, erotic bodies, personifying the anarchies, clumsiness and beauty of raw sexual desire." - Alison Croggon, Theatre Notes