Current works

BalletLab works demonstrate diverse creative ideas that are conceptually rigorous and experimental, often profound yet highly entertaining.  The works are inquisitive, exuberantly idiosyncratic and often a fascinating hybrid of mediums. Our works - past, present and future - offer an experience that goes beyond the traditional realm of dance and performance making.  Our philosophy in dance encompasses a cross-disciplinary sensibility in movement, choreography and the construction of narrative. We produce our creations between residency partnerships, museums, festivals and commissions. Each project reveals the importance of dialogue between director and dancers in the collaborative process, utilising very open and experimental methodologies.

Aviary

Aviary is a new work developed by BalletLab in association with The Australian Ballet, that had its world premiere during the Melbourne Festival 2011. Aviary takes its inspiration from French composer and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen's colourful musical explorations of birdsong from his Catalogue d'oiseaux (1958), and builds links between music, choreography and staging to produce an experimental interpretation of his scores. Aviary is a work for the caged bird, both real and metaphoric, that uses the focal figure of the dandy - the self created hero/celebrity, to explore the outsider in society and the desire to 'flock' versus the pull of the individual. With a nod to 80s music, fashion and art, Aviary is presented in a riot of colour with its giant hand-painted scenic backdrops and brightly coloured sentry boxes. Aviary is an ovation to ballet traditions and a revival of the classical staged fantasy, injected with a dose of contemporaneity and BalletLab sensibilities. Learn more...

Trilogy

Phillip Adams' legendary piece Amplification is revived with two other pieces, the award-winning Miracle (2009) and new work Above (2011) in the premiere of this complete trilogy that spans over ten years of BalletLab work, presented as part of MONA FOMA 2011, and celebrating the opening of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania. Specially commissioned for MONA FOMA, The Trilogy is a riveting presentation of works from award-winning choreographer Phillip Adams that span over ten years of BalletLab, exploring death, transcendence, the after-life, and apotheosis. Amplification was premiered in 1999, Miracle in 2009 and in 2011, we premiered a brand new third work, Above, to fanfare the launch of the Museum of Old and New Art. Learn more...

Amplification

Amplification is a portrait of the body in chaos. Using the car accident as a metaphor for mental/physical disassociation, Amplification examines the thresholds of the human body's response to sound, light and physical impact. Developed through research conducted at a hospital emergency ward and the Melbourne morgue, Amplification magnifies the 1.6 seconds ‘disassociation' freeze time which occurs at the moment of impact. Skidding, sliding and crashing into a world of body bags, pain, healing, reality and unreality, Amplification deconstructs and reconstructs the site of impact with scientific fascination and a morbid fascination with the body in chaos. Amplification is an exploration of densely layered, highly technical and studied partnering; revealing the possibilities of death, ritual, burial and torture within the form of an installation. Learn more...

Miracle

Miracle takes up contemporary concerns about religious radicalism and uses revolutionary evangelist groups from the 1960s and 70s to explore the dynamics of group behaviour, rapture and the desire to achieve an alternate, transcendent state of being through religion. Artistic Director, Phillip Adams considered the manipulative power of Jim Jones of The People's Temple and Australia's own celebrated alternative cult/community, the Universal Brotherhood to create Miracle, in which the group experience of emotionally charged religious fervour and alienation from conventional life is played out as an experiential performance. Learn more...

Above / Lamb

Lamb, commissioned for the Festival de Mexico and performed by Mexican dance company Lux Boreal in March 2011, draws on similar territory to Above including apotheosis, transition and reincarnation, and performed with a saturated vision of Mexican culture. Above premiered as part of Trilogy at MONA FOMA in January 2011. Above is an ebb and flow of transitional stages resulting in rebirth. Like a fairytale in the guise of a road move, Above tells of primal initiation rites, dreams of immortality and magical incarnations, as a metaphorical performance of ‘God becomes animal'.
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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.
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