battery opera was founded in 1995 by dancer/choreographer Lee Su-Feh and writer/singer David McIntosh.

The work of battery opera interrogates the contemporary body as a site of intersecting and displaced cultures, histories and habits. Underlying the practice of battery opera is a dynamic dialogue and mutual attraction between opposing tensions, an exchange that is sensitive to the nuances of power and influence in the socio-political history we have inherited.  Inherent in this dialogue is a search for language that both embraces and frees us from the assumptions of traditional performance structures.

battery opera celebrates the power of the human body to transform space, time and perception; a body that is at once fragile and powerful; a body that breathes, speaks, sings, thinks, moves, dances.


why battery?

because it's small, practical yet contains within it the polarities of positive and negative, male and female, yin and yang.

why opera?

because it's big, impractical and contains within it the polarities of life and death, love and fear, hope and despair.

history

2009 "Lives were around me."

2008 Body-Scan (co-production with parB.L.eux)
          The Whole Beast
2007 What the Hell?
          [storm] II
2006 [storm] I
          Wanton Heat and Loose Desire
2005 Bob's Lounge
2003 Cyclops
2001 Spektator
2000 Reptile-Diva
1999 Wake
1997 Brick
          Gecko Eats Fly
          Let’s Get Ready to Rumble
1996 Hinndi Finndi Hogmonay in Old Guangzhou
1995 Ten Thousand Things
          Speck
1992 A Character of Dubious Morality

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Awards

  • 2004: battery opera is recipient of the coveted Best Naked/Worst Naked award from Crimson Coast Dance for Spektator in Nanaimo
  • March 2002: battery opera receives a Jessie (Best Lighting Design for James Proudfoot) for Spektator after which the award committee bans all dance companies from future eligibility
  • March 2002: battery opera is announced as recipient of the 2003 Alcan Award for Performing Arts in Dance
  • May 1998: Lee Su-Feh given the Prix de Jeune Auteur of the Rencontres Chorégraphiques de Seine-St. Denis for her work Gecko Eats Fly
  • September 1992: A Character of Dubious Morality wins Producers' Award for choreography at Dancing on the Edge Festival