Thurs 5 December | Natalie Inside Out

Playful, beautiful and highly skilled, Natalie Inside Out is a unique collaboration between world-class hand-balancer Natalie Reckert and digital artist Mark Morreau, using technology and video projections to turn our conventional ideas of circus upside down and inside out. Literally.

Fusing circus and interactivity to examine the inner workings of the body, Natalie and Mark playfully investigate the relationship between the actual and the mediatised body. Exploring the intersection of live acrobatic performance, close up video and spoken word, they embed movement on stage into projected landscapes on screen, to reveal the underlying mechanics, emotions and motivations of the circus body.

Additional information

Playful, beautiful and highly skilled, Natalie Inside Out sees hand balancer Natalie Reckert and digital artist Mark Morreau pool their talents in a strikingly intimate show about the vulnerability of a circus artist as she struggles to achieve something extraordinary.

Fusing exceptional circus tricks and interactive technologies, Reckert and Morreau playfully investigate the relationship between Reckert’s flesh-and-blood body and its digitally represented counterpart. They mix live acrobatic performance of challenging hand-balancing moves with extreme close-up slow-motion video and talk about the personal emotions, challenges and stories behind the thrilling facade. Morreau transforms Reckert’s live movement on stage into beautiful expansive graphic landscapes of the body on screen, showing how digital media can actually illuminate the mechanics, emotions and motivations of the human body.

Natalie Inside Out has been developed with The Lowry and supported by Arts Council England, National Centre for Circus Arts Lab:time2 and Jacksons Lane, with additional support from Greentop Community Circus Centre.

BIOGRAPHIES

Natalie Reckert and Mark Morreau first worked together on Stumble DanceCircus’ An Evening of Instability in 2008. Drawn together by a shared desire to investigate the inner workings of the circus body they formed Reckert & Morreau in 2016. Shortly after this they were awarded the £5000 National Centre for Circus Arts Labtime2 bursary to begin research and development on Natalie Inside Out in partnership with Jacksons Lane, North London’s flagship venue for contemporary circus. Subsequently they were approached by The Lowry to support the development of the show through their “Developed With… programme”. The show has been devised and shaped through a series of work-in-progress showings in London, Salford and Sheffield throughout 2016 and 2017 before premiering at The Lowry and at Jacksons Lane in April 2018 as the closing show of the Roundhouse CircusFest.

www.natalieinsideout.com

Natalie Reckert is a circus maker integrating robotic movement, spoken word and hand balancing to create full length shows since 2007. She has created three pieces with aerialist Ilona Jantti between 2009 and 2017. With ‘Collectif and then’ she co-created and performed The Machine (2016) at the Barbican Centre, funded by the Samuel Beckett Award. Her solo performance Selfie with eggs, created in 2014, had a successful run at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016 (4 stars, Total Theatre) and toured across Europe.

Mark Morreau is an established filmmaker and photographer following 15 years as a professional trapeze artist. Recent work as a digital artist includes working with Complicité as Associate Video Director on the re-tour of “Drive your plough over the bones of the dead”. Other recent collaborations include projection design for Chisato Minamimura’s “Mark of a Woman”; creative captioning for Altered Skin’s “Fatherhood”; “Emerging” and “Depths of my Mind” with Scarabeus Aerial Theatre; and ongoing work with Lindsey Butcher / Gravity & Levity, documenting work and creating films of her practice. His solo piece United States (2016), supported by an Artist in Residence award at Access Space, Sheffield, explored the use of interactive software and responsive interaction between digital media and the performer.