REVIEW: Bathing with Elephants and other Exotic Reveries

An astounding Journey into the unknown [by James Wenley]

What does an Elephant sound like?

The Civic Main stage is dark, waiting for its first performance of the year. But the building is alive. The show is Bathing with Elephants and other exotic reveries, with much for the inteprid audience member to encounter.

Bathing with Elephants is a collaboration between Vitamin S, Co-Lab and STAMP at THE EDGE. Going in, I could rely only on the beguiling press material describing it as a “cross-bred exotic performance... mixing genre and technology like a kitchen-whizz in a Bombay spice shop”.  The project moves through the smaller spaces within the Civic complex – like the Taj Mahal, Safari, and Wintergarden rooms – using the spaces as inspiration for a series of constantly surprising work that belies easy categorisation. We’re taken on a wholly unique, and bizarre, tour of the Civic.