Lost in Music

Devised and Directed by Rose English
With Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe

Lost in Music is a spectacular show in song and circus featuring twenty exceptional performers from Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe.

Inspired by China's millennia-old tradition of transforming everyday vessels through feats of acrobatic skill, Lost in Music unfolds in a series of fragile and sublime images that meditate on the nature of consciousness, the phenomenon of entropy, and the heightened reality of an artform where years of training can concentrate in a single second of performance.

The cup, the bowl and the jar, the props of Chinese acrobatics and symbols of the harvest, are remade in glass and taken up by twenty members of the renowned Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe – who by their control and power embody both the delicacy of the props and the furious heat of their creation.

A tower of cocktail glasses chimes ethereally, balanced on the nose of a young acrobat. The tendrils of an opaque candelabra stream from the mouth of a contortionist like a ghost or breath of spirit. A great, glass jar rolls and jumps over the contours of a man's body.

The audience are held in moments of stasis and suspension, then released as the performers fly from each other's hands – virtuosic and ensemble acrobatic displays running like faultlines across the piece.

Lost in Music is a work of exceptional physical skill animated by the vision of one of the UK's foremost visual and performance artists. With twenty of the world's most accomplished acrobats, bespoke glass items wrought by master artisans, and a specially composed score that coils around a delicate and secretive libretto, the piece is a unique cross-cultural collaboration and a searching exploration of live performance at the meeting-point of three major artforms.

Building on two work-in-progress showings (Ornamental Happiness at the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, and Flagrant Wisdom at Sunderland's National Glass Centre), the elements of the piece – acrobatics, music, and glass – will be showcased individually in 2011 and then combined in 2012 for the full premiere.

Click here to read Rose's thoughts on Lost in Music.

Creative Team:

Director: Rose English
Acrobatic Director: Jonathan Graham
Performers: Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe
Designer: Simon Vincenzi
Composer: Luke Stoneham

This project is supported by National Glass Centre, Sunderland. Produced by Crying Out Loud and Reckless Moments.

For more information on Lost in Music e-mail projects@cryingoutloud.org