Strange Fruit

Coming to Millennium Park this summer for five days as part of the Family Fun Festival is Australia's Strange Fruit, the Melbourne-based performing arts company that fuses dance, circus and spectacle theater in their work. Perched atop fourteen-foot flexible poles that bend and sway in the air, Australia's Strange Fruit can be found outdoors in the Chase Promenade Central from July 10-14, 2008.

Originally based on the image of a field of wheat swaying in the breeze, the poles' extreme strength and flexibility allow the performers to bow to impossible angles, swaying back and forth, as the audience looks up in wonder.  The company will perform Swoon!, a quartet for two male and two female daredevils that tells the story of love, loss, joy, and freedom up on high.

"We are so pleased to bring Australia's Strange Fruit to Millennium Park this summer, as part of the Family Fun Festival," said Lois Weisberg, Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.  "We can't wait to see these whimsical characters, along with the enchanted faces of young and old that will delight in the universal story that they tell-all reflected in the surface of Cloud Gate."

Australia's Strange Fruit will perform 14 times throughout their stay and hold a free workshop on July 12 at 5 p.m. in Millennium Park's Wrigley Square.  The performance schedule on the Chase Promenade is as follows:

July 10 - 1:00, 3:00, 5:00
July 11 - 1:00, 3:00, 5:00
July 12 - 3:00, 7:00
July 13 - 1:00, 3:00, 5:00
July 14 - 11:00, 1:00, 3:00

With a world-renowned repertoire that celebrates a wide variety of themes and stories, Australia's Strange Fruit has achieved near-cult status in almost every continent across the globe. Since 1994, they have performed for over 250 international festivals and events in more than 35 countries in Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America and Australia.  With nearly 30 return engagement festival invitations, the company has performed for over one million people.  They have been awarded the national (Australian) Myer Performing Arts Award, the Silver Trophy at the Daidogei World Cup, Japan in 1999 and 2000, and the 2003 Premio Del Publico, in Valladolid, Spain.  Their Millennium Park engagement is the beginning of a United States tour.