Full Concept and Production

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Nexus was commissioned for the Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts in 2019 and developed with support from Arts Council England. A trio of dancers and an ensemble of instrumentalists together explore themes of accumulation and play, tackling the relationship between expressive intention, the amplitude of movement, and sound in an interactive, sonorous, and visual journey.  Created in collaboration with award-winning theatre composer David Ridley and Bristol-based Symphonic Orchestral Collective Insight Ensemble. This performance can be staged as a simple trio of dancers to a professionally recorded soundtrack of the full composition or with live musical accompaniment. It is a joyful and colorful performance that gently explores friendships, creativity, and adventure taking the audience through three dance performances to a crescendo of syncronized and spectacular flying.

full concept & production

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Devised and produced by Full Tilt Aerial and created in collaboration with video designers Limbic Cinema and Composer Ahmet Kenan Bilgic and Serkan Emre Cifci Substratum is a large-scale touring production designed for public space and chartered for ambitious and innovative cities. The Spectacular work sees animated and mapped projected visuals meet acrobatic vertical dance, and is a tightly choreographed interplay between the virtual and physical anchored to a bespoke electronic score. After just under two years in development, Substratum premiered at Freedom Festival, Hull, UK in Sept 2018 and went on to win several industry awards. Including best live production at the European Video Mappubng FDestival and Creative Innovation With Sound Design at the UK Theatre and Technology Awards.

As seemingly solid surfaces shift fluidly underfoot - the work explores how a changing environment affects how we move within and experience our world.

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Live Show Direction & Design

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Produced by Compass Presents and funded by the BFI Celluloid Sail is a multimedia interactive expanded cinema production that toured the UK on the magnificent Kaskelot - one of the largest wooden Tall Ships in commission. Full Tilt designed and directed a twenty five minute circus theatre spectacular as a prequel to screenings of Wes Andersons Life Aquatic, drawing Inspiration from the colourful and comic tones of Steve Zizzous world.

The site specific performance event intergrated clown, high octane aerial circus and aerial dance with film footage from the BFI's archive and a soundtrack inspired by the original film.

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"Second best to No Fit State Circus"  - Audience Member, Sutton Harbour, Plymouth 2017

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"An acrobatic performance that began among the audience sitting on the harbour and escalated to the heights of the ships rigging"  - Nigel Watson plymouthartscentre.org

Co-Direction and Aerial Choreography

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Arcadia’s Metamorphosis symbolises an incredible new chapter for their immersive 360 degree spider stage. Developing the themes of transformation, abductees are morphed into extraordinary new beings.

The challenge within the creation of this site- specific aerial spectacle was to discover new approaches to the spider stage and arena while creating work for an audience of 50, 000!  New rigging systems were devised, new ways to use the spiders limbs found, clever approaches to navigate huge, expensive costumes into tiny spaces discovered. The approach to show-making on the structure took a complete overhaul allowing the creative team to innovate. A breath-taking immersive experience littered with special FX and pyrotechnics.

Zipline Production & Choreography

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A special commission from Boomtown Festival, and supported by Arts Council England. The BoomTown Games was the second incarnation of circus theatre production 'Athletes of The Night' which is the creative brainchild of circus director Bex Anson and Contemporary Circus Company Bassline Circus. A tale of gang rivalry and life in the favela, the show was featured the use of two large zipline systems which were used as stage entrances for a series of 'battles' in a contest for the top spot and a key to a luxury apartment. Full Tilt worked with Bassline Circus to design the flying systems used in the performances and with the performers in their choreographic approaches to using them. Performers flew above the large audiences audiences in an exciting and immersive experience.

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watch the video using the button or click on the project image for the gallery

Aerial Choreography

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‘British Eccentricity’ occurred over two nights at Cirque Jules Verne in Amiens, France; one of the few remaining purpose built circus buildings in the world.

Produced by the critically acclaimed producing house Crying out Loud The show featured two 'eccentric' UK contemporary companies; The Invisible Circus & Carnesky Productions. The event was imagined and realised by Crying out Loud director Rachel Clare.

Full Tilt worked with Invisible Circus and directed the site-specific, harness based aerial work, telling a story of a gaudy cocktail of grotesque ghosts living and dancing in the magnificent building but who have been forgotten. 

The  journey unfolds to a live musical score, as the characters realise the audiences have come back to see them perform once again.

The aerial performances featured flying, rotating hoop, counterweighted aerial dancers, flying a Chinese pole into the circle from the 25m roof with an acrobat already attached and built into a large ensemble celebration, with fire & a 10 person aerial finale flying cradle & counterweighted dancers act.

The ghosts then promenaded the audience outside, making appearances in the windows and on the balconies to a beautiful finale on the roof with harness work, fire & pyrotechnics.

Specialist Artist

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A Collaboration between Full Tilt Aerial and Internationally acclaimed Turkish contemporary dance producing house Ciplak Ayaklar, Full Tilt Aerial created a special vertical dance performance for the International Scenography Biennial in Stuttgard, curated by Artellier Brukner. The piece was presented as part of a double bill of works from the 'Turkish art collective 'who presented 'Ón Air' and leading choreographer Eric Gauthier who presented Excerpts of his works.

Creating to a bespoke live score from alternative rock music producers Gevende and with choreography and direction from Ciplak Ayaklar, We created a solo movement piece that integrated animated projected visuals by Osman Koc from Nerdworking with inspiring electronic soundscapes.

Casting Direction and Aerial Choreography

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Arcadia’s world-touring ‘Landing Show’ sees a giant, fire-exploding spider awaken. The immersive spectacle fuses pyrotechnic effects, cutting-edge technology, live aerial performance, and electronic music.  Aliens figures are spun in the air suspended high up on the huge metal beast.  

Dela Seward works choreographically with the aerialists & crane drivers to weave organic motion into the architecture of the 50-tonne spider.  The cranes creak to life, aliens bungee out of metal pods, and audience members are abducted from next to you. All whilst lasers zip around you and, huge flame explosions warm your face.  In a euphoric finale, other-worldly creatures move through beautiful shapes of unity with the spider, creating harmony between the fragile human form and Arcadia’s mechanical landscapes.

Aerial Choreography

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A research and Development project creating content for ‘Screened’ - a multimedia show concept commenting on gaming and street culture, Produced by Bassline Circus. Work was created based on young people's interviews about their gaming, internet and social media use and experiences. The show aims to highlight the paradox of screen time excess in an excessively screen facing society.

Full Tilt worked with Bassline Circus directors and producers to develop a performance concept that used a metaphor of the circus performer as a real life gaming character. Full Tilt choreographed aerialists to interact with projected images in a vertically oriented space -  running, jumping, high kicking and flipping to the projected visuals on the wall. performing vertical dance choreography perfectly in time with animated projected content portraying an illusion that they really are competing against one and other in a game format from another reality.

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Full tilt also designed a complex 6 person counterweight system and performance within a pyramid of lazers light sculpture. 

Performance & Concept

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Full Tilt Aerial presented an experimental dance work in progress at Testing Ground - Bristols dance and circus scratch event produced by Ausform and Circomedia.

Sight:Unseen is an aerial dance (harness) counterweight duet that is unusual in its exploration of a substantial size difference between two performers. An experiment in physics, it combines the technical challenges this presents with the narrative possibilities that it offers, drawing from the imagery of Dante’s Paradiso and his journey through the concentric spheres of heaven guided by Beatrice; where ascension brings enlightenment but also blindness. This is a duet exploring these tensions and contradictions in the vulnerability of vertical space. 

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Choreographed and performed by Jess Allen and Rowan Fae

Original music by Fortisyru ‘i’ve marooned myself on this island of sugar’ and ‘angel voices’

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​"I've never seen it done like that before"  - Bim Mason, Artistic Director of Circomedia

Associate Production 

Flow was commissioned by the environment agency and was designed to raise awareness about life in flood zones within the UK.

The performance project was produced as part of the Multi-Story Water events, a weekend of community activities that took place in and around the M32 underpasses in Bristol.

The Project involved over 180 performers, a mixture of members of the community, local groups, youth dance companies, dance students and professional performers, Full Tilt worked with a group of graduate circus artists, training them in harness based aerial dance before putting together a twenty-minute finale piece to end the performance 

Finale Direction

A series of four legendary Bristol immersive theatre events known as 'Carnyville'

The Invisible Circus CarnyVille shows quickly became a Bristol legend, each event growing in size and becoming more immersive and spectacular. The last of which ran for 8 nights over two subsequent long weekends -  the longest that had been attempted for a Carnyville. It was a show of epic proportions with hundreds of volunteers making up the majority of the cast, crew, and creatives.

The site-specific finale events produced by Full Tilt were spectacular and quickly became a trademark to these events. The final Carnyville, the last one ever, begged for something even bigger and better than what had been before!

For it's ultimate incarnation the Carnyville finale was extended to a full thirty-minute spectacle, reprising many previous elements of the event, and extending the experience over thirty minutes with over two hundred performers and musicians involved in the short but intensely memorable spectacular.

Produced by Full Tilt Aerial

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A special commission from Boomtown festivaL and created with support from Wired Aerial Theatre emerging artists support scheme, 'Fully Tilted' was a vertical dance street style show performed on a bespoke set in the center of Boomtown Festival - A temporarily erected infamous art & music city! The show fused Vertical Dance, Contemporary Dance and Breakdance sounds and styles with a narrative that saw the performers ultimately ascending the walls for a Vertical Dance finale