A delicate feast for the eyes and a poignant provocation for the mind, Masquerade plays with our perceptions of people based on their appearance.

At the heart of Masquerade lies a simple question: how does the outside of a person (mis-)represent the inside?

First impressions based on clothes, colour, physicality and age are turned inside out as we watch this unique symbiosis of costumes, masks and human bodies unfold.

Un-ticking the boxes of statistics and pulling the unexpected out of pigeon holes, six performers unwrap, unzip, unbutton and peel off layer upon layer of skins in search of what might lie underneath.

Masquerade merges arrestingly sensual movement, humour of a darkly surreal kind and a dramatic concept that gives free reign to the choreographer’s 'scrupulously focused yet wildly hallucinatory' (The Guardian) imagination.

70 minutes. On the road: 6 dancers, Artistic Director, 2 Technicians

Contact Shira Hess on: 01206 825674 or email shira@tilted.org.uk

^ Top ^

Three Drops In The Ocean

Available for touring summer 2011

Three Drops in the Ocean is a flexible programme of three dance theatre vignettes that evolved from some of the most magical moments of Beyond the Seven Seas and Glacier.

It is designed to be performed in unconventional locations and seek to engage audiences in new ways. Responding to climate change, unsustainable fishing and sea pollution, these short pieces offer a visually striking and inventive comment on urgent matters in a non-didactic and often darkly-humoured way.

Adaptable to a variety of contexts, Three Drops in the Ocean can be presented in its entirety or as individual pieces and can be tailored to indoor as well as outdoor locations suiting conferences and festivals.

Three 5-8 minute pieces; On the Road: 3 dancers, Artistic Director, a Technician

First Drop: Sardine Grey
Sardine tins, a laid table and two diners synergise in this excessive eating ritual. A sharp eye for detail and witty use of odd timings and dynamics turn everyday gestures into five minutes of thrilling suspense. It’s entertaining, eccentric and darkly humorous, yet you will also taste the traces of unsustainable fishing, food waste and greed in this bittersweet feast.

Second Drop: Porous White
A couple stranded on an ice floe, moves along its sharp edges embraced in a last dance. Full of striking partnering work, a beautiful, emotionally charged, yet fragile and risky duet unfolds that is driven by the very limited space of the crumbling platform underneath the dancers’ feet. Without words the striking moving imagery conveys a subtle commentary on climate change.

Third Drop: Bottle-Green
A tragicomic dance that merges three performers with dozens of green plastic bottles. The bottles move over and underneath the dancers’ clothes, distorting the lines of their bodies, transforming them and affecting their movements. Bottles appear as unnatural extra limbs and weird shapes that pop out in different places. The dancers turn into continuously mutating creatures: one moment a dinosaur with a spiky spine of bottle tops poking up through a stretchy top, then suddenly a seagull with elongated wings spread out wide. These floating images provoke thoughts of endangered species in plastic-flooded waterways and landfills and raise questions of our society’s relationship with water and plastic.

Contact Shira Hess on: 01206 825674 or email shira@tilted.org.uk

^ Top ^

SEASAW

A coastal trail of installations and dance theatre vignettes

Tilted Productions was invited to develop the first stage of SEASAW as part of Escalator Outdoors Arts and in association with Norfolk and Norwich Festival. The outcome of this research project premiered in Cromer in May 2010, where the beach and promenade were the locations and inspiration for this extraordinary seaside event.

A trail of dance, performance art and physical theatre snippets, SEASAW was inspired by the great diversity of what the sea and its shores mean to people and what draws us to the coast. Whether evoking a glimmer of the glorious bygone days of Victorian seaside attractions or provoking thoughts on current issues such as coastal erosion and water pollution, this was an unusual, contemporary take on the seaside fair.

We are now looking for partners to produce the full and final trail in summer 2011. If you are a promoter interested in working together please contact us to find out more. Otherwise sign up to our mailing list for tour details.