Graphic: Maria Hayes

Several Stories High

Performer: Matilda Leyser
Theatre Director: Marcello Magni
Aerial choreographer, trainer (cloudswing) & designer: Michele Weaver
Aerial choreographer & trainer (tissu):
Katrina Carter
Composer and performer: Daniel Weaver

The aim of this project was to research and develop new ways of working with circus aerial skills in collaboration with physical theatre, with a view to creating a full-length production.
The research focused on how to achieve and advanced level of integration between the use of aerial skills and theatre, one in which the presentation of the skills does not require a 'theatrical justification', but rather the skills themselves become a dramatic language, a medium through which ideas and emotions can be communicated, and narratives told. In order to achieve such an aim the research brought together a range fo artists from diverse disciplines.
The project culminated in a showing entitled Night-Fall at Battersea Arts Centre in June 2003.

‘In the night, as in the air, nothing looks the same as the broad and grounding light of day’

Nightfall, a piece based on a tissu (vertically hung fabric), grew out of experimenting with contrasting levels of tension in the air, in search of new images and choreographic possibilities.
It played on the dramatic and humerous potential of transposing a low tension state of physical ease, comfort and safety, that of lying in bed, to a place of extreme tension, suspension and danger, namely the air.
Whereas more conventionally aerial techniques are designed to heighten this state of tension, the piece exploited the comic drama of working against this dynamic.
The physical game gave rise to the theatrical story and so the piece reveled the paradoxical nature of our resting places as precarious spaces;our beds as the site of our greatest emotional tensions and terrors.

“very impressive work-in-progress ... Matilda is an amazing silks artist ... able to ... twist and turn and fall through space while all the time creating the illusion that she was completely relaxed”  London Arts Assessor

Funded by the London Arts Circus Development Fund