Winged Bull in the Elephant Case Performance Live

Tonight, you join me at London's National Gallery on the north side

of Trafalgar Square for a very special performance.

It's part of a strand of programmes called Performance Live,

bringing some of today's most exciting artists

to the small screen.

Photographer Robin Friend

and world-renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor

have brought together guest choreographers, composers, dancers,

spoken word and music artists to create a unique and sensuous journey

through the gallery rooms,

as well as a mysterious underground cavern.

As sirens sounded in 1939,

it was from here that the nation's art was evacuated

to a slate mine in Wales.

For five years, the near empty gallery would become a venue

for lunchtime concerts, before peace, and the collection, returned.

It's this tale of exodus and redemption that inspired

tonight's story, in which an evacuee painting takes on human form

as it struggles to return home.

The film asks the question

what must be done to protect humanity's cultural heritage

from violence in the world?

Here...

..another ballad for the borrow bodied

The displaced

But not the likely story

1940, we were carried in coyote kisses, canvas skin

Blurred into vignettes

Under the burning of wings, we were the persons of interest

Proudly hung masterpieces

Now, young evacuees, blue-lipped, acrylic

Shivering in the boot

Huddled in truck back

Promised a new home with the long walk of the Navajo, but

Well wished

Smuggled like abalone shell fish

To a pre-gutted galleria in a Welsh rib

We felt like latchkey kids

Did you read those letters home to Ludwig on the Luftwaffe wing?

We wrote you love in linseed oil, under the blitzkrieg

Look at the things we'd spoiled for war

Who made a killing off the human race by killing off the human race?

A shilling each for Schumann played

Enter, winged bull in the elephant case

MUSIC RAMPS UP IN INTENSITY

HE BREATHES DEEPLY

MUSIC: Earth - The Elements by Tunde Jegede

WATER DRIPS

RADIO STATIC

MUSIC: Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Major by Ludwig von Beethoven

MUSIC TURNS ORCHESTRAL ELECTRONIC

RADIO STATIC INTERWEAVES WITH MUSIC

SONATA SLOWLY BUILDS