Garry Stewart

A mental patient who believes he is Humphrey Bogart escapes from his institution and sets up in business as a private eye. Based on the the comic book series created by writers John Wagner and Alan Grant.

If we compacted the human emotional range into a few minutes, what might it look like? From the Artistic Director of Australian Dance Theatre, Garry Stewart, this is a dazzlingly baroque explosion of imagery set to a wildly unexpected electronic score. It explores the choreographic possibilities of the gestures and facial expressions that constitute human emotion. The physicality of these emotions are universal and can be read from one cultural group to another. The way in which emotions are expressed by the body is a type of dance if we think of ‘dance' as being underpinned by kinetics and rhythmic patterns of the body.

Using the dancing body as a metaphor, The Circadian Cycle examines morphology, biological rhythm and animal behaviour. The film charts a day from sunrise to evening, moving through cycles of nature, from nascence and awakening to predation and death.