Warrior and the Girl
A monumental puppet performance created for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, combining large-scale sculpture, aerial performance, animatronics, and modern dance.
Created as a daily performance for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, The Warrior and the Girl told a simple story of friendship and peace through giant puppetry, aerial performance, animatronics, and modern dance. The work was commissioned by Johnson & Johnson for its Because We Care, We Act campaign and presented at the Olympic Live Site in Beijing.
At the center of the twenty-minute performance were two monumental characters: a 22-foot terracotta warrior suspended from an 80-ton construction crane and a 15-foot girl rigged to a 40-foot boom forklift. Forty dancers and puppeteers worked together to move the figures through the performance area.
Radio-controlled facial features brought the marionettes to life, while a radio-controlled butterfly and an aerial performer guided the characters through the story. The production joined traditional puppetry with heavy-equipment rigging and contemporary performance techniques.
The show was performed four times a day for seventeen consecutive days, turning an ambitious feat of engineering and choreography into an intimate story staged at an Olympic scale.
