The Sydney Opera House and The British Council have announced the February program of new works for the UK/AU Digital Season. Six cutting-edge digital performance works by artists from across the UK draw on hip-hop, dance and drama to explore the contemporary British experience from many perspectives, through themes of community, identity, gender and the body, as artists explore the question ‘Who Are We Now?’.
Audiences everywhere can access these powerful new works for free on Stream, the Sydney Opera House’s dedicated arts streaming platform. The Sydney Opera House is proud to announce the launch of the new Stream app, where a global audience can experience this new performance environment on their mobile, desktop, tablet and TV, from wherever they are in the world.
The February program of the UK/AU Digital Season will feature the following titles, with the final month of programming to be announced on 1 March.
- Battersea Arts Centre Beatbox Academy’s hit show, the hip-hop inspired Frankenstein: How to Make A Monsterreinterprets Shelley’s classic fable about the monsters society creates with a dazzling array of vocal talents including rap, beatboxing and song from the perspective of young people growing up in 21st century Britain – 200 years after the 18-year-old Mary Shelley wrote the text.
- Here/Not Here is an acclaimed crossover hip-hop drama short that combines elements of dance, Krump and hip hop, with football, BSL and Visual Vernacular, to explore how we all try to find our place where different groups compete for use of urban space. Directed by independent filmmaker Bim Ajadi, led by disabled artists, and written by Britain’s foremost advocate for Hip Hop, Jonzi D.
- UK-based, Canadian-born dance maker Laila Diallo’s 1:1 is a short dance film made to the scale of our kitchen, exploring notions of impermanence, of our perception of the passing of time, and of how we negotiate togetherness.
- Made in 2021 amidst a world ‘working from home’, Kitchen Alba places the miraculous in the most mundane of spaces: a domestic kitchen. Artist Jo Bannon’s riff on religious iconography, white goods, family and faith, is informed by her identity as a disabled woman with albinism.
- Billy Boyd Cape is a director of music videos, commercials and short films who has collaborated with artists such asFKA Twigs and Pussy Riot. In the emotional and award-winning short film REACH he collaborates with Olivier Award winning dance artist, choreographer and director Botis Seva and his hip hop theatre collective, Far From The Norm, to explore the themes of love, abandonment and fatherhood.
- Contemporary performance maker and choreographer Dan Canham’s Still House: In the Letting Go is a physical excavation of patriarchy, vulnerability, intimacy, care-giving, playfulness and love, and an unburdening, a way forward towards new models for masculinity.
Supported by the UK/Australia Season Patrons Board, the British Council and the Australian Government as part of the UK/Australia Season.
Stream is a virtual front row seat to contemporary and classical music, talks, dance, theatre, kids entertainment and original digital art, direct from Sydney Opera House’s stages. Watch highlights from the archive, presentations by local and international arts companies, and original content by leading artists created exclusively for the platform. Subscribe for free and download the App to start watching Stream from any device, anywhere in the world.
Featured image : UK/AU Digital Season – Boltis Seva and Billy Boyud Cape-Reach
