Carla Thackrah flute - SeeTea Productions
A suite of music and film created and composed by Carla Thackrah in 2005 and recorded in 2007 by Topology with an Australia Council grant.
As the ‘Sweet’ in the title suggests, the music is in the form of a dance suite borrowed from the classical tradition. However, this piece offers a dark twist to old forms. It was written to accompany the experimental film Circus Sweet which is a collection of archival footage from Australia’s past featuring circus and circus-like acts. It presents a quirky and at times dark take on the circus world.
The circus is a place of illusion and enchantment on many levels. We want to believe it is a world of simple entertainment, an escape from our mundane lives, but in reality, the circus is itself an illusion, masking the dark grimy underworld of a performer’s life.
The music was written to mirror this double illusion. On one level it is a simple dance suite based on traditional form - tonal and entertaining. However, interspersed amongst the dance music are unexpected tonalities and sound textures created with digitally altered voice samples which create an unsettling element to the work.
The film was made with mostly Australian film footage pre-1950. It was edited with a loose narrative and linked together with animations by Chris Barker and a classic silent film from the 1930s starring Anna May Wong.
It was created with the assistance of a grant from Arts Queensland. Topology recorded the music in 2007 with a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts.