Twelfth Floor is a landscape in which we become confined observers. Sometimes searching for exits, sometimes happy to remain.

Characters emerge and unravel in this darkly funny physical exploration of human interactions in confinement, set in a mysterious institution.

As the house lights go down, we see a stark insitutional space, with green walls and broken furniture. Two bored men play one contest after another, searching out the limits of the space confining them… and of their own bodies, in a powerful display of muscularity and masculinity. A third quietly creeps from shadow to shadow, chalking messages of escape, hope and desperation.

A door opens. Enter a new arrival, a timid young woman escorted by a uniformed figure, her movements as absurdly controlled as the regime she enforces. For the next hour, five extraordinary dancers unleash virtuousic performances, as powerful as they are precise, playing out shifting relationships of desire and power, of hope and despair.

A rich texture of dance, theatre, movement, video and DJ Tr!p’s moody electronica make a sophisticated and original work, shifting effortlessly from tender, lyrical moments to brooding menace to explosive physicality.

“A lot of Australian dance is very nice, but that’s not enough. I want to get to the underbelly, to see people as complex — affection and hostility are such great physical premises for dance.” Tanja Liedtke

“This brilliantly incisive and perceptive dance work is disturbing, laugh-aloud funny and tragic. In turns and at the same time. As I write, tears are filling my eyes. That is how strongly it affected me – then, now and, I expect, for a long while to come.” Jill Sykes, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2006

Australian Dance Awards 2006

* Winner, Outstanding Achievement in Choreography
“For a work of clarity and innovation, utilising choreographic form to convey a detailed and complex concept – a mature, imaginative and confronting piece displaying vision and inventiveness and a sophisticated combination of diverse performance elements”.

* Winner, Kristina Chan, Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer
“For an exquisitely measured performance of great skill, charisma and technical excellence”.

* Nominated, Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance
* Nominated, Paul White, Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer
* Nominated, Outstanding Performance by a Company