A baby brachiosaurus is munching on a leafy tree unaware of the danger, in the form of a hungry allosaurus, lurking behind. Just as the predator is about to pounce, the 11-metre-tall mother brach emerges, lets out a ground-shattering, angry roar and sends the allosaurus scurrying for its life - and the rest of us back millions of years to a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
Welcome to Walking with Dinosaurs - the Arena Spectacular, a show based on the popular 1999 BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs. Created by The Creature Production in Australia and BBC Worldwide, it promises to bring back to life giants from the Triassic (about 245 million to 208 million years ago), Jurassic (about 208 million to 144 million years ago) and Cretaceous (144 million to 65 million years ago) eras.
Judging by the fact it has played more than 1,200 performances in more than 142 cities since its launch in Australia three years ago - with one production still touring the United States and another to start in Asia next month - the show is doing a pretty good job. Kicking off in Japan, the production is scheduled to visit Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea and the mainland (Guangzhou, Shanghai and Nanjing) and will hit town this Christmas at the AsiaWorld-Arena. The box office opens tomorrow.
The stars of the show are the animatronic dinosaurs. They were built by a team of designers, electrical and mechanical engineers, technicians, sculptors and painters in Melbourne under the supervision of designer Sonny Tilders. Twenty dinosaurs from 10 species are featured in the Asian tour, created after extensive research and scientific conjecture. Meticulous attention has been paid right down to minute details such as skin texture as well as overall physical dimensions (mama brachiosaurus at 11 metres tall and 17 metres long, has been reduced in size because no arena can accommodate one in full scale, which is estimated to be at least a third bigger).
Alli Coyne, resident director of the Asia production, says the creators of Walking with Dinosaurs - the Arena Spectacular wanted dinosaurs that represent the three periods covered.
'We wanted them to look as different as possible from each other. Yes, there were so many but they looked similar in lots of ways so we tried to go for extremes. There's the brachiosaurus with its long neck and the stegosaurus with the plate on its back and the big, swinging tail with the spikes on the end. We tried to find ones that are the most different to each other,' she says.
