Awakening Shadow is an opera production of Benjamin Britten’s five Canticles, woven together with new work by leading Australian composer Luke Styles. With the Canticles being composed over a 30-year period, the production explores Britten’s changing relationship to his faith, art and selfhood over the course of this life.
To create the statue-like imagery, ballet dancer Luca Armstrong was photographed with 120 synchronised cameras. The resulting images were processed using photogrammetry, which generates 3D geometry through the analysis and comparison of multiple photographs of a subject.
A monolithic 5-meter tall LED screen is the central element of the stage design. Choreographed forms that represent various mythological & biblical characters and phases of Britten’s life transform between pure and corrupted - depicting Britten as lover, victim, aggressor, sacrifice, survivor and martyr.
The floating bodies are progressively multiplied, intersected, distorted and fragmented - photorealistic yet hauntingly unreal, as if existing somewhere between life and death.
