Improve your lunchbreak - watch Adrienne Hart's 'Falling From Trees'

I'm trying to write about a seven-part piece of music by young musician Peter Broderick, Music for Falling From Trees - and I've become a little distracted.

Falling From Trees is half-hour piece of contemporary dance set in a mental hospital; the patient is, by turns, tormented by his nurses, tranquillised and given electric shock therapy. It sounds distressing, and it kind of is - but it's also beautiful, the male performer's fluid-then-disjointed and magnetic movements mirroring his delirious, semi-conscious state. Broderick's anxious score - written solely for violin and piano, and recorded in a loft - is suitably mournful and tense.

The piece, choreographed by Adrienne Hart of London's Neon Productions, is accompanied by some striking images and segments of film projected onto a backdrop - especially effective are the animated pencil drawings that partner Act III, 'Pill Induced Slumber', where nine running foxes gradually slow, stumble and fall asleep mid-escape, symbolising the patient's own fight to stay awake and resist his captors.

Concise and eerie, this is a poignant work - and you can watch all seven sections of the show here. At just half an hour in length, it's a perfect and thought-provoking diversion for your lunch break!

Here's the trailer to whet your appetite:

Falling From Trees premiered at London's The Place in January but will tour throughout Autumn 2009 and Spring 2010.

Broderick's soundtrack is out now on Erased Tapes, and I'd recommend investigating his back catalogue, too - Home (on Bella Union) is his best-known work. It's a song-based LP, but his earlier output creates the blueprint for Music for Falling From Trees with bleak piano- and string-based pieces.

www.myspace.com/peterbroderick