A new show by The Bicycle Ballet Company
2026 is the 20th anniversary of the first ever Bicycle Ballet show, which created a Car Free Day event & closed the biggest car park in Brighton on the seafront.
Since then, we’ve created 7 shows – from mass participatory choreographies, to roving performance; epic imaginary worlds to revolutionary heritage. Most of these have had various iterations, been created with & without participants, & toured extensively.
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The Story of a Bike will be our 8th & probably last show. It is a story about a bike, told by a bike. A tale of rides & races & daring escapades.
The story is told as an outdoor show by 5 performers. It’s a dance theatre piece, fusing dance, physical theatre, clowning & humour, with a stunning narrative soundtrack. The show is made for the street, with a 180o audience. It’s for all audiences, all ages & all festivals & events.
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This story has been brewing for a long long time…
20 years ago, at the beginning of this journey, a friend gave me this book, Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman – highly recommended!
In this world, life without a bike is unimaginable. Bicycles are sentient companions. Life-long friends who gradually become more like their owners. They’re capable of heinous crimes & are often complicit in their own escapes….
This always made me wonder about the bike as a narrator
What tales would your bike tell? Epic journeys & adventures, owners loved & lost; punctures, parts replaced, or cold, scary nights on bike racks?
Then, in 2012, a gentleman in his early 80s donated this bicycle to the reCyculture project in Gravesend. The bike had been given to him by his grandfather on his 14th birthday.
A very long lived bike, with plenty of stories to tell.
This gentleman rode it everywhere, endlessly tinkering with it. He changed the brakes, changed the handlebars, changed the wheels & tyres, painted & repainted it… But as he got older, he collected other bicycles & didn’t really ride this one anymore.
We can imagine Our Bicycle Narrator feeling a bit left out, perhaps a bit jealous & dusty amongst the new favourites! Perhaps plotting to run away…
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I was telling someone about this idea; the endless tinkering, replacing parts, painting & repainting & he mentioned the Ship of Theseus.
Theseus was the mythical King of Athens who’s ship gave his name to an ancient Greek paradox.
The ancient philosophers wondered, ‘If a ship’s rotten timbers were gradually replaced over time, is it still the same ship without any of the original wood?’
In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes took this further, asking ‘If all those pieces removed from the original ship are made into a new ship, is that one the original?’
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Imagine… Our ignored, jealous & fed-up narrator escapes from the shed. Perhaps spends a terrifying wet & cold night or two in the wild… And is then captured….
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When bikes are stolen, they’re often stripped down & put back together, repainted & transformed…
-– say from a racer to a hybrid….
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Is Our Narrator the same bike? Will its voice change? Will its personality change & what new stories & memories will the replacement parts bring?
And what happens next? New owners, new adventures? What happens when Our Narrator meets another Bike with some of its original parts? Will the original owner recognise it now? How will it reach a happy ending?
The Story of a Bike explores all of these ideas & more.
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Back in 2021, we received Cultural Recovery Funding & ran a series of R&Ds, including The Story of a Bike. It deepened thinking & gave us some great images, but probably raised more questions that it answered… & this is where we’ve got to now.
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Next Steps
We’re looking for:
- Partners – commissioning or part commissioning partners to support funding bids
- Collaborators – costume design, writer, performers, narrator, participants to co-create some of our stories & maybe the show
- Touring Opportunities from 2027
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Please get in touch if you’d like to explore developing this new project with us HERE
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The Story of a Bike highlights the bike as the ultimate sustainability machine. It can be recycled & upcycled over lifetimes; treasured & dumped, yet still able to be revitalised. It’s great for your health, wellbeing, hours of relatively free fun & it never asks for anything from you. It’s great for the environment, pollution, congestion etc etc etc & it runs on donuts!
www.bicycleballet.co.uk