Exploring the interrelationship between the spoken word and music as a structuring principle, the tale is told by two performers, to an electronic musical score partially created through live, real-time composition.

Discombobulator is a collaboration between Ben Duke, Will Duke, Dario Palermo and Zoë Svendsen.

The piece was developed during a 12 day interdisciplinary residency at the Venice Biennale’s International Festival of Contemporary Music (2009).

Discombobulator was part of Dance Umbrella’s Brief Encounters series, in which short works by talented new choreographers or established artists are performed prior to main stage shows.

‘A work that combines choreography, singing and music with some utterly intriguing videographed materials. It looked great, and intrigued me with its Frankenstein/Mad Genius/Twilight Zone narrative’- The Spectator The Difference Engine is an interdisciplinary performance, creating a richly-layered imaginative environment accompanied by an especially commissioned score, recorded by the Arditti Quartet; using interactive technology as a storytelling tool.
This is the second joint work from Ben Duke, Will Duke, Zoë Svendsen and Dario Palermo.

It was co-commissioned by London’s Gate Theatre and Dance Umbrella 2011, in conjunction with Metis Arts with support from The Junction, Dance Digital and the RPS Drummond Fund. It followed on from a previous work, Discombobulator, that was first created at an ENPARTS residency for the Venice Biennale Contemporary Music Festival in 2009, and which was shown at Dance Umbrella in the Purcell Room in 2010.

Audience comments on Difference Engine:

‘Fantastic collaboration of different media.’

‘Innovative, exciting combination of voice music and dance, very interesting lighting.’

‘Excellent, brilliant integration of dance, video and music generating strong emotions in audience. Dancers were superb.’

‘I loved it… beautiful and strange and surprising – absorbing, will be thinking about it for some time… really rather wonderful. Thank you.’

‘I thought it was extraordinary. What phenomenal performers! A fantastic merging of choreography, narrative, live music and production design.’

The starting point of the project was an interest in spaces and their uses. What has come to fascinate us particularly in the course of meeting people and sharing memories, is the extensive system of exercises that rehearsed ‘post-attack scenarios’ during the Cold War. These trained a wide variety of personnel, from volunteers in the Royal Observer Corps, to local government workers, to undertake a variety of tasks that were designed to enable the continued functioning of government administration, for the purposes of coordinating rescue, such as would be possible, across the UK.

The project culminated in a performance event at The Junction, and catalysed the ideas for the project that became 3rd Ring Out.

Click here to launch the Bunker Project website for the interviews and further information.

Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Lima:London Project Description PDF (2.7mb)

 ‘A memorably atmospheric piece of theatre, timely, unsettling, cold and true’                           (Joyce McMillan,         Scotsman) 

With an original score created and performed by award-winning Scottish composer David Paul Jones and performed by David McKay

A backroom bar tale of the perils of winning.
Four men on a ship from Havana to New York, all champion swimmers, playing poker. It is not for nothing that they call one of them ‘lucky Johnny’. But this time, he is really pushing his luck…

Click here to watch a video of Four Men and a Poker Game
Click here to view the Four Men and a Poker Game microsite