A crowning jewel in the Melbourne Festival 2017 program, this 2015 production (produced by and premiered at Manchester International Festival) brings together the talents of three giants within their respective fields: Icelandic-Danish installation artist Olafur Eliasson, DJ and producer Jamie xx, and British choreographer Wayne McGregor. And, as Melbourne Festival director Jonathan Holloway says, "none of them steps back to let the others have their moment, they all just plough in. And that might not have worked, but it has worked so brilliantly."
The inspiration was Jonathan Safran Foer's controversial 'novel' (commonly referred to as a 'sculptural object') Tree of Codes, in which he physically excised words from Bruno Schulz's The Street Of Crocodiles in order to create a new work – in the physical sense, and the narrative sense.
In her review of the New York season, Time Out New York's Helen Shaw writes that "In the music, the inspiration led to layering and complexity; in the visual environment it spurred Eliasson to create illusory tunnels and games with depth onstage – when the giant mirrors descend, they turn the space into a mise en abyme, so we seem to be seeing endless rows of dancers stretching into the black beyond."
Check out our Melbourne Festival 2017 highlights hit list, and our Melbourne Festival Feasts guide.