19-21 JULY 2024

Beautiful Bones is a large-scale street spectacle and musical pandemonium that reframes the rituals of death as a celebration of life. The central question being – why are we so afraid of death?

 

Western contemporary culture appears spectacularly disinterested when it comes to the subject of death, especially our own. We leave the mechanics that surround it to others. In Beautiful Bones a theme of general celebration, comedic irreverence and blissful acceptance challenge our own dour and often miserable rituals.

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Beautiful Bones is designed as an inclusive community participation project, creating a high-quality performance platform for up to 90 non-professional musicians, performers and dancers. The work is multi artform in its essence, integrating theatre, music and dance, with multiple access points for players and performers depending on their experience and skill.

 

A professional core of top UK musicians and performers will lead a massed community ensemble through a series of promenades, high impact choreographed street interventions and a final stand-off between four professional trombonists drawn on chariots by wild performers (the horsemen of the apocalypse), a community trombone orchestra, and a local brass band.

 

Original music and sound design by award winning composer Stephen Deazley takes inspiration from 1990’s rave, British SKA, and medieval secular dance music, bound together with the energy and colour of Mardi Gras.