Fight Dance Fight

TRISTAN MEECHAM

The sec­ond in the tril­ogy of Out­door Spec­ta­cles by Tris­tan Meecham.

A Glad­i­a­tor was an armed com­bat­ant who enter­tained audi­ences dur­ing the Roman Empire in con­fronta­tions with other glad­i­a­tors, wild ani­mals, and con­demned crim­i­nals. By fight­ing or dying well, Glad­i­a­tors inspired admi­ra­tion and pop­u­lar acclaim and were revered and her­alded as heroes; much like elite sports men and women are today.

FIGHT DANCE FIGHT (FDF) is a per­for­mance bat­tle extrav­a­ganza based on the heroic feats of the ancient Roman Glad­i­a­tors. Humphrey, the star of FUN RUN, is pitched against the forces of local sport and dance com­mu­ni­ties, fight­ing each group in a series of dura­tional chore­o­graphed bat­tles. Set in a sta­dium style amphithe­atre with rock and roll light­ing, lasers and a mas­sive sound sys­tem, FDF is the the­atri­cal equiv­a­lent of a World Wide Wrestling event. As in ancient Rome, it is the audi­ence who dic­tates which ‘Glad­i­a­tor’ is tri­umphant and spared humil­i­a­tion and ‘death’.

This cel­e­bra­tion of elite sport­ing groups, high art to high camp has it all; opera singers, per­form­ers, dancers, fire­works, com­plex dig­i­tal pro­jec­tions, killer sound­track and sport­ing mer­chan­dise. FDF is a multi-faceted event that draws an unsus­pect­ing audi­ence into a vis­ceral high-energy endurance performance.