kneeHIGH home

graffix by Zaen

A vision of a group of black clothed acrobatic figures appearing, dancing and disappearing in a twinkling of flashing lights and then coalescing in their signature cluster around their giant mother.

This work is designed for festivals and events that are at night with a naturally dark backdrop: parks e.g. Elder park, the Convention Centre Riverside, rural festivals.

The scenario is a group of youngsters with their mother, the 'dark one'. Kneehigh made the original Dark One puppet for the production of Insight Unseen which premiered at the Melbourne Festival in 1997. She is such a powerful image that she had to have another life.
She is 3.4m tall giant stilt puppet completely covered in double black velvet and carrying about 180 LEDS that light up gradually in patterns driven by a miniature programmable microprocessor.

We are considering several stages:

Stage 1: Develop costumes and performance for Womad 05

Stage 2: after Womad designing possible daytime costumes
Stage 3: music commissioned

These figures appear at night as shadows from behind buildings, trees, other people and CLUSTER as groups and in a tableau with their giant mum. Skills include tumbling, human pyramids and free-form dance.

The PIXELS suits will light up either all at once or in waves or also to go to blackout in an instant. The lights can be operated by a simple switch as well as by mercury switches. These are able to be switched the current on automatically according to the bodys orientation: e.g.: raise the right hand all lights on, left hand all lights twinkle, dive to the ground and go to black. The light circuits will run on a 6 volt system set up to insure safety and comfort of performers.

Creative
Tony Hannan will nominate as Director, Roz Hervey as Choreographer, Emma Harper as a trainer with street theatre experience.
Juniper Van-den-ende to design and supervise making of costumes. Tony and Leigh Milne from Electrickery will do technical R&D and prototyping.

Pro -Am option
An option if the Cluster / Pixel group is in demand is to substitute Cirkidz trained adults: e.g. Tara, Jannah, where school aged performers are not appropriate or available e.g. school times or extended tours.
Another option is to have the pixels as a pro-am group incorporating some professional(s) trainer(s)

Light suits:
KneeHIGH have been working with battery powered fairy lights and LEDs on costumes since the first Android in March 1994. A light suit was made for the Compare in the KH Cirkidz collaboration Devil in a Red Dress.
kneeHIGH have recently been working with Leigh Milne for our Family From Away project using a new micro processor that allows more light chasing possibilities than ever before.
LEDS produce a bright light in several colours well suited to costume work as it produces negligible heat and uses little battery power.

KNEEHIGH HOME