Performers in Hull will join world renowned circus company Circa as they bring their internationally acclaimed production Depart to Hull’s General Cemetery.
Depart will transform Hull’s General Cemetery to create a spell-binding and immersive show as part of the Roots and Routes season at Hull UK City of Culture 2017.
Over 100 singers from Hull Freedom Chorus will be a part of the cast, layering vocals onto the musical arrangement curated by electronic musician Lapalux. Performers from Northern School of Contemporary Dance will also join the company throughout the tour.
Supported by Hull CCG and Spirit of 2012, Hull 2017 is also working with the National Centre for Circus Arts to upskill gymnastics and dance students, creating ‘Circus Champions’. As part of a programme of development, mentoring, experience and training, the champions will participate in Depart, leading the audience around the cemetery.
Depart, which is Supported by Arts Council England’s Strategic Touring Fund, received its world premiere last summer at LIFT 2016 where it played in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.
Inspired by the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, Depart takes audiences on a path through the underworld in atmospheric locations. Transforming this evocative environment, celebrated circus artists will dance above the heads of a roaming audience to create genre-defying spectacles. With direction from Yaron Lifschitz and a creative team including Lapalux, Depart brings together acrobats, aerialists, local community choirs and video artists for an inimitable, immersive evening of immersive entertainment.
Following the run at Hull’s General Cemetery, Depart will then travel to the Woodvale Cemetery at Brighton Festival (25 – 28 May) and Blackpool’s Stanley Park (1 – 4 June).
Katy Fuller, Executive Producer of Depart for Hull 2017, said: “Depart embodies the whole ethos of Hull 2017: bringing world class artists to the city; showcasing and developing local talent; and using non-traditional venues to encourage people to look at parts of the city in a whole new light.”
Yaron Lifschitz said,
“At the heart of the experience is the attempt to grasp the ungraspable – to connect ourselves with the very liminality that makes us human, to look up even as the long-buried lie beneath our feet. Depart is a meditation, a playground for the soulful, an art gallery without walls, a circus in search of transcendence and a hundred moments of joyous beauty. It is performed with respect and aims for rapture.”
Mark Ball, Artistic Director of LIFT, said
“With circus performers defying gravity at every turn and Lapalux’s beautiful electronic score soaring above the treetops, wandering around Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park during Depart last June was a personal highlight of last year’s LIFT.”
“I’m delighted that we’re now able to share Circa’s epic and emotionally-charged show with audiences across the country, bringing an array of exceptional circus artists, composers, choral arrangers and singers and dancers together to create a spine-tingling piece of work. I hope Depart stays with audiences for as long as it has stayed with me.”
Tickets for the show, which runs 18 – 21 May, are available from www.hull2017.co.uk/depart.
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