Manchester International Festival: Douglas J Cuomo's music features in Juliet Ellis live installation

Immersive and dreamlike, this new film and live installation from artist Juliet Ellis offers a deeply personal meditation on the nature of self. A Symphony of Flesh and Bones features music by composer Douglas J. Cuomo, including Savage Winter; Proverb; Only Breath; Veronika and others.

Manchester International Festival

Aviva Studios, July 10 - 13 2025

Photo credit: Isha Shah

Multidisciplinary artist Juliet Ellis presents a new work of expanded cinema, combining live performance with moving images projected across multiple screens. A Symphony of Flesh and Bones (2025) examines the tripartite relationship of body, mind and self. Using film footage of her father and brother – who pursued respective careers as a professional bodybuilder and a cage fighter – Ellis questions the role of our bodies as protective shells, and asks how the ravages of age impact how we perceive ourselves. 

In addition to directing the piece, Ellis also performs live. In doing so, she reflects on the body as an impermanent yet physical and active agent on stage, juxtaposed with recorded images that present the body as a captured but fleeting presence. Drawing on her own personal history, the work offers intimate reflections that engage broader ideas of self-representation, the desires we project onto the body, and the ways it is both ephemeral and preserved through memory and art.

Read Manchester International Festival: 5 Things You Can’t Miss in Frieze here.