About the artists
Orlando Gough (left) and Alain Platel
Alain Platel
Alain Platel trained as a remedial educationalist, and is an autodidact choreographer and director. He is best known for his pioneering work with the internationally acclaimed Belgium companies Les Ballets C de La B and Victoria. Bernadetje was presented by Artangel in 1997 on a dodgem track with a mixed race company ranging in age from 8-85. And Iets op Bach was brought back twice to the South Bank in 1998, a dark and joyous urban epic featuring a trio of opera singers and a disparate group of social outcasts.
"So what does Platel stand for?" asks the Les Ballets C de la B website. "There is no unequivocal answer. His world is not neatly divided into sheep and wolves, a man is also a woman, and nothing can ever be only beautiful. It is never either/or."
The Shout
The Shout was formed in 1998 by the composers Orlando Gough and Richard Chew. The singers come from very varied backgrounds - gospel, jazz, blues, contemporary classical, opera, early music - and include several accomplished improvisers. It has been called a 'vocal big band', a 'club choir', a 'vocal Stomp', a 'dangerous choir', a 'choir of Babel' and a 'choral phenomenon'. It is, they hope, all of these things.
Orlando Gough was a founder member of the bands The Lost Jockey & Man Jumping. He writes music mostly for the theatre - operas, plays, dance pieces, music-theatre, directs The Shout, and devises and directs large-scale site-specific choral pieces. Recent work includes The Singing River, for 12 choirs, 18 boats, two cranes and a locomotive (Theater der Welt, Stuttgart), an oratorio The Most Beautiful Man From The Sea (Welsh National Opera), We Turned On The Light (Proms), Swarm for marauding chorus (Barbican), a music-theatre piece Critical Mass (Almeida Opera Festival), an opera The Finnish Prisoner (Paddock Productions and Finnish National Opera), a music-theatre piece One, Two for six pairs of identical twins (Dartington), Open Port the closing event of Stavanger2008 European Capital of Culture, for 800 singers, brass band, wooden trumpets, and Raketensymphonie the opening event of Linz09 European Capital of Culture, for voices and fireworks. He is an associate artist of the Royal Opera House and is currently working on an opera with libretto by Caryl Churchill.
Sophie Fiennes
Sophie Fiennes began making films in 1998. She is widely acclaimed for her unique observational eye and strong sense of cinematic form. Her films include The Late Michael Clark, Because I Sing, Hoover Street Revival, The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema and VSPRS Show and Tell. Fiennes often employs a collaborative approach to filmmaking. She has worked with artists and thinkers ranging from dance maker Alain Platel to philosopher/psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek. Her films therefore also act as powerful portraits of some of today's most iconic individuals. Current projects include a film with Anselm Kiefer called Over Your Cities, Grass Will Grow and an observational feature documentary titled Grace Jones – The Musical of My Life.