Magical space-inspired Christmas adventure on the Brighton stage
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
Their production Starchitects Save Santa! will enjoy five performances between Friday, December 20-Sunday, December 22 in the Corn Exchange (brightondome.org) – a seasonal adventure in space, a chance to blast off into the galaxy with the Starchitects, a group of friends who leave their cosy sleep-over to embark on a daring rescue mission.
The show will combine gravity-defying choreography, amazing digital projections and magical characters for you to meet in a visual spectacle like no other, promises company artistic director Kevin Finnan. There’s no recommended age. It’s for everyone, Kevin says.
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Hide Ad“We created it last year with the Midlands Arts Centre, and we had a massive run there. We ran for six weeks. Basically we had previously done a show called Starchitects about a group of children that play together and have sleep-overs and they go to one of their friends’ houses. It is Christmas and there are Christmas boxes around and they're going to sleep but just before they do that they look at the cosmos. They are looking through a telescope to see if they can find Santa. And they see him flying through the sky but unfortunately he flies behind the moon and things go wrong… without giving too much away… so wrong that not only they but all the children in the world won't get their presents this year if Santa cannot be found. It is down to them. So they go through these boxes and they decide that they're going to create a rocket to fly to this strange planet which may be the moon or maybe it isn't. And they go off on a huge adventure.
“The idea for me was to make a show that celebrates the nature of play. The show is extremely playful. It's about imaginative play and playfulness where we can make whatever we need out of cardboard boxes. You see people playing games on screens but this is about making things and imagining things and that's what we wanted to celebrate. It is super-exciting. We have got everything. We have got lots of aerial stuff and lots of really exciting dance and we've got some wonderful projections. We have developed the show from last year when it went extremely well and we have taken it further. I think it's a really, really fun and energetic show and it really engages the audience and talks to the audience. We employ all the joyful experiences of Christmas and it's all about having fun. It has some fantastic dance and some really magical imagery and there is a whole projected screen that we're able to pass through and appear in, and we combine all that in a really joyful way.”
Motionhouse was founded in 1988 by Louise Richards, who is CEO, and by Kevin, who is artistic director.
“We have kept going because we passionately love what we do and we love meeting our audiences and taking our work out to meet audiences as much as we can. We've got big indoor shows and we've got smaller theatre shows that we can take to smaller theatres. We do giant outdoor spectacles on a massive scale and we do smaller touring outdoor shows as well but we realised we didn't have anything for children and that's why we did Starchitects. Our mission is engaging as many people as possible and we have pursued that rigorously. We are full time and in the contemporary dance world that's extremely rare.”
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