A skater, a break-dancer, a BMX rider, an acrobat, a dancer and a fallen diva carve out a pleasure ground from a stark urban space, in this spectacular fusion of street-style and dance.

Welcome to Paradise City, the show that turned Sydney Opera House into a skate park, from Sydney-based company Branch Nebula.

Six figures in a space survey and then circle each other, bike teasing the acrobat, dancer tangling with singer. Tension builds. Skateboard circles. They explode into action. The board climbs a skate ramp and slams across the top, unleashing a torrent of sounds and bodies.

The BMX rider dances from pedal to peg and up on one wheel, his bike spinning around his body as though it is alive. The diva sings to a live score spanning sumptuous Bach, driving beats and the crunching sounds of skateboard wheels. The performers begin to interact, to steal each other’s moves. Wheel on wheel. Wheel on body. Body on body… shifting effortlessly from explosive energy to lyrical, sensual duets.

Director Lee Wilson says “This project has grown out of a love for the anarchic, do-it-yourself nature of the urban art forms of breaking, flatland BMX and freestyle skateboarding. Paradise City integrates these forms into a tightly choreographed ensemble work, with resonating layers of meaning for the audience – but staying true to the raw energy and excitement of a street style jam.”

Co-creators Lee Wilson and Mirabelle Wouters have brought together an extraordinary team, with streetstyle professionals mixing it with performing artists.

Nominated in the 2008 Helpmann Awards, Best Visual or Physical Theatre Production

“…a thrilling, powerful performance” Australian Stage

“Branch Nebula’s Lee Wilson and Mirabelle Wouters have created a work of poetic intensity out of everyday play, dance and physical theatre, making the most of oscillations between stillness and action and, above all and magically, of the strange time-space in between…More and more audiences should be invited into this strange paradise.” Keith Gallasch, RealTime

See also: Concrete and Bone Sessions, Whelping Box and Sweat

Branch Nebula

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