Strange Fruit – Spheres

Strange Fruit performed this weekend at Discovery Green. It’s hard to describe, so let me borrow from their web site…

Strange Fruit is a Melbourne-based performing arts company that produces and performs a remarkable style of work that fuses theatre, dance and circus, using a unique elevated medium. Perched atop 4 metre high flexible poles of original design, the troupe delivers a sublime performance, bending and swaying in the air, captivating and engaging the audience in absolute fascination.

On Friday and Saturday night they did a show called “Spheres” in which the performers shimmied up to the top of tall, flexible poles and then encased themselves inside of giant white fabric spheres which then began to sway back and forth like so many dandelions bending in a light breeze.

As dreamy, ethereal music played the performers emerged from the spheres in the form of four characters and proceeded to put on a pantomime that was, well…hard to describe.

Again, from the web site:

Creation, exultation, liberation, life, the universe and everything. The Spheres take a whimsical look at physics, the miracle of birth and humanity’s existential relationship to our planet. Giant, illuminated orbs of luminous beauty contain characters that gradually emerge to stand and rise above their spheres of existence. This piece is beautiful, reverent and sublime.

The whole show lasted about 30 minutes and it was really quite beautiful and pleasant to watch. Also, quite a challenge to photograph.

These pics don’t really capture the movement so well. In my next post I cover their daytime performance of “Swoon” and it gives a better sense of how extraordinary this was.

Additional photos in the gallery.