This brilliant fusion of music, dance, theatre and opera – including a full-scale brass band – is a pure, life-affirming celebration of the power of making music together.

With almost 40 performers on stage, Alain Platel – one of the world’s great performance makers – in collaboration with soul mateFrank Van Laecke celebrates the marching band community and one of its members, a larger-than-life trombonist coming to terms with his demotion to cymbal player.

Music clubs are a microcosm of society, a collection of individuals striving to play in harmony. In this exuberant story of love, thwarted ambition and youth, teachers, solicitors, plumbers and nurses are brought together while our hero trombonist terrorises band members, confides in the audience, sings arias and dances an unlikely ballet duet.

This genre-defying international collaboration places our own Brisbane Excelsior Band, winner of eight Australian National Championship titles, at its brimming heart.

The sensationally arranged music includes marching band classics along with Verdi, Beethoven, Schubert, Richard Strauss,Elgar and Holst.

Les ballets C de la B travels the globe with a thrilling mix of contemporary dance, text, theatre and music. This is the third time their work has been seen in Brisbane, following Coup Fatal in 2015 and Out of Context – For Pina in 2011.

Photo credit: Stephan Vanfleteren

There will be a post-show Q&A following the Tuesday September 6, 7:30 pm performance.