Belly of the Whale directed by Tina Koch, and from Ockham’s Razor, winners of the Total Theatre and Jacksons Lane Award for Circus at the Edinburgh Fringe 2016, is an incredible meeting of circus and sculpture. This new outdoor show offers an innovative combination of cross-disciplinary curiosity and intuition.
The performers, like surfers on a wild sea, ride a giant semi-circular see-saw made of wood and steel which creaks and groans as it transforms from a catapult to a gently rocking cradle, to a tunnel, to a slide – creating an ever-changing land and soundscape. The concept of the belly of the whale is found in mythology around the world – what happens when we confront our fears and come face to face with the power and momentum of things we seemingly can’t change?
We spoke to director Tina Koch to find out more.
You are directing Belly of the Whale, what can you tell us about it?
Belly of the Whale is a circus-theatre show featuring 3 physical performers and 1 live musician. It takes place on and around a giant semi-circular seesaw made of wood and steel that actually looks a bit like the rib of a huge whale. The concept of the ‘belly of the whale’ is found in mythology around the world, most familiarly in Pinocchio and Jonah. It is a graphic and potentially frightening image to enter the ‘belly’. Metaphorically it is about that petrifying moment when we dare to see ourselves as we truly are.
As a creator I am interested in the image of being held within something bigger than oneself and how putting our lives in perspective and coming face to face with our fears may evoke strengths we did not know we had. There is a brilliant song by Kimya Dawson about putting things in perspective called ‘I like Giants’ that we listened to during creation. But as much as Belly of the Whale is a show about overcoming ourselves, it is also about the people who challenge us to grow. The friends that push us to step out of our comfort zone, standing by our sides when we leap into the unknown, ready to catch us if we fall.
My favourite moments in the show are when I sit amongst the audience and everybody is collectively holding their breath watching the performers run and leap on and off this wildly rocking beast of a structure. And then there is this shift when people slowly become aware of how the performers watch out for each other and how they could not do what they are doing without the support of each other. The glances, the smiles, the minute perfect timing they have with each other – they are so in the moment, so commited, they have to be, – it is incredibly moving.
How did you get involved in the production?
I am joint artistic director of Ockham’s Razor together with Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney. We met at at Circomedia, Academy for Circus and Physical Theatre in Bristol and have been creating shows together for 12 years. I recently I made the change from performing into directing. Me and Charlotte co-directed our last show Tipping Point (Alex is performing in it). Belly of the Whale is the first production we are not all involved in, which offers great opportunities for us a s a company. We used to all three perform in our shows and could not keep up with all the offers we have been receiving for designing, devising, teaching and consulting.
Now we are able to have two shows on tour, Belly of the Whale and Tipping Point plus we can offer mentoring and consultancy to other companies, teach masterclasses and direct other work. For example, whilst our two shows are on tour this June, Charlotte and I will be co-directing the National Centre for Circus Arts BA ensemble graduation show. We are so happy to be able to take on these opportunities to work with the next generation of circus artists and pass on our knowledge. And even more importantly tell them about all the mistakes we made along the way and wish someone had told us beforehand!
What are the challenges of presenting this in the outdoors?
We have been creating Belly of the Whale specifically to be performed outdoors. From a design perspective, the challenge has been to create a piece of circus equipment that is a sculpture in its own right that draws people’s attention. Other than in a theatre where the audience will only come into the auditorium during performance, our structure will be on display all day during the festivals and we wanted it to be beautiful, powerful and inviting. Maybe we made it a bit a bit too inviting as it proves to be a magnet to small children that all want to get on it!
Besides that, our biggest challenge would be the English weather.
Due to the highly physical nature of the performance we cannot perform when the structure gets wet. As the performers are pushing the semicircle to rock higher and higher they jump through the openings, slide down the wood, fall and roll, let themselves be lifted and thrown – their safety relies on the grip beneath the soles of their feet, we cannot allow for the wood or the dancefloor to get slippery.
Even though we have taken our previous work outdoors before, this is the first time we are making an outdoor show and I have to say it has been thanks to the support of Turtle Key Arts, Without Walls, Circulate and Basingstoke festival who believed in our vision and guided us to get this ambitious project on the road.
Tell us more about the actual Belly of the Whale, the structure that’s used during performances?
It is a beast of a structure that weighs about 800kg – a semicircular seesaw made of wood and steel. Once it rocks it is a huge force with its own rhythm. You can’t fight it. When you fling yourself against it, you will hardly affect it, it will fling you. It can catapult you, could even crush you, but it can also rock you, hold you, cradle you. And if you give up trying to control it and move with it, you can ride it like a surfer rides a big wave in the wild open sea. As it moves you can hear the wood creaking and the metal groaning. It is seemingly such a simple object, but it can transform within the minute creating wildly different movement possibilities. There is a choreography of this structure that can be at once beautiful and deadly.
I developed the idea for the structure with Stefano Di Renzo who also performs in the show.
We were striving for a true integration of the beautiful and the useful. To achieve that we have been drawing on Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Ratio. The first, a pattern and sequence that is found in branching of trees, flowering artichokes, breaking ocean waves and the human body. The latter, a design concept that is to create visually appealing proportions in art, architecture, design and music.
We have been working closely with Thomas Loriaux, a genius structural engineer and Eric Abadie,a fantastic craftsman.
How would you describe the way Ockham’s Razor are pushing boundaries?
For each new show we create a bespoke new piece of circus equipment which we will use as a catalyst for creation. We continuously invent and discover new techniques and nurture a fruitful combination of cross-disciplinary curiosity and intuition in the creative process.
The use of circus disciplines has been quite popular in theatre and opera productions recently which is fantastic, but with some wonderful exceptions sadly often doesn’t do the artform justice. We believe that there are strong, clear and deeply moving relationships, emotions and stories within the physical movement of circus. What we aim to do is draw out what is already there rather than putting a story or theme on top of the movement – adding a bit of theatre to some circus or a bit of circus to theatre. I think circus has a lot in store to enrich and deepen a narrative in crossdisciplinary productions and we still have a long way to go there. We are at the forefront of representing high quality circus in its own right for all it has to offer. Together with our wonderful producers Turtle Key Arts we have been trailblazers in challenging preconceptions about what contemporary circus can be. We have been crucial players in getting circus recognised as an artform in this country and getting shows programmed in big venues all over the UK. National theatre next please, hahaha!
Tell us about the music in the show?
We are working with Gabriele Pierro, a sound designer, musician, composer and audio engineer. He is on tour with us playing live, fusing acoustic with digital compositions, mixing in real-time recordings of the structures sounds to create a unique soundscape. In his composition, each of the performers is represented by an instrument: Nathan by the piano, Amanda by the guitarlele (a fuse between a guitar and a ukulele) and Stefano by the bouzouki (a greek string instrument reminiscent of a mandolin, but pitched lower). Gabriele works a lot with putting real life sounds through filters and has a real talent and pleasure in improvising on the spot. At one point in the show he uses the recording of the voice of a blue whale, it is so low frequency that you almost can’t hear it, but you can feel its vibrations through the speakers in your chest, it’s brilliant!
