Basically three dancers dance separately to a soundtrack of their inner thoughts.
As audience you can either participate or watch.
If you choose to watch you sit and channel hop choosing which of the three dancers to listen in on or, as I did on occasions, you can find a sweet spot where you listen to (but not quite understand) all three of them
If participating is more your bag you wander the space watching the action and listening to the thoughts of who you choose to look at. Sometimes you are invited to join in the movements as prescribed or just to do your own thing. Otherwise you are just left to mooch.
I love this technology / live theatre cross over space. It is the techie in me asking how much further can we go. But usually there is a director in the room telling us techies to stop. Not this time! Although I did wonder why we couldn’t have gone one step further by introducing a VR headset: then no-one would have needed to leave their own home – audience or dancers or techies. Especially as the company had to hire out a 240 ticket venue to entertain… well a lot fewer.
So we all donned our headsets and immediately entered our own little world. As a non participatory audience member I felt cocooned – left experiencing my own mix of show, my own mix of moments, of highs and lows; it was my journey, my way, it was no longer a shared experience. I was not sharing with my fellow audience.
Well this is a dance installation. It is not theatre, so we are not audience, but if we are not audience, what are we?
I looked around. What was everyone else listening to? Someone might be having an exciting evening, if by luck they stumbled on the perfect series of points. But on the way home we struggled to discuss much more than the concept, because we had very little shared experience beyond that and neither of us had held a winning lottery card entitling us to the complete story.
I was not really sharing a journey with a performer either. I was like a crap friend, dipping in and out of their lives with no idea where their journey was headed or where it started. I found out that Adam was worried about how things are going at his new job but, that he was a driven perfectionist re-evaluating the meaning of success? That I had to get from the press release. I also missed out on how that re-evaluation went because my mind as elsewhere when he let us know. And by listening to Adam early doors I missed out on knowing anything about the others. Argh!
Also the performers don’t relate to each other. There is no cross-over in storyline and nothing to learn about one, by watching another, so why put them on the same stage at the same time?
But this is an installation. This is a headphone led art gallery tour – and we are just moving between neighbouring exhibits by the same artist. I wonder what would my experience have been had the installation taken place in an art gallery. But again why am I still only getting half the story? Should the curator have done more than just show three pieces by the same artist? Shouldn’t each piece have had an effect on those installations around it? Or at least set a context .
Actually it is more like three street buskers doing their own thing in Covent Garden at the same time.
Or maybe a Silent Disco where everyone chooses their own sound track and sometimes you get to earwig: just like any journey on London Underground really but you get the idea.
OK, it is an artistic event created by others enjoyed by me. So who cares about people’s definitions. But I’m just trying to let you know what you might feel on leaving the theatre.
And I did enjoy it.
I enjoyed the range of movement by the two dancers nearest. The third spent a lot of time obscured by participants. Also, by chance ,the physical vocabularies used by the two closest dancers (Sara Augieras’ hyper focused stretches, balances and contractions and Ryan Naiken’s breaking and hip-hop) were visually more interesting to me, so I watched them more.
I enjoyed the soundtrack. A mix of music by Christina Karpodini (long time Collaborator with Unwired and whose Automn Paces I am listening to as I type) and the hidden thoughts spoken by “Voice Artists” Caterina Grosoli, Lisa Ronkowski, Iain Ferrier, Zoë Trassl.
I enjoyed the interactive lighting but with no variation of space, of dynamic , of movement through space, it was all rather monotone.
Of course I was a static audience member. For the participatory members, the variation of space, of dynamic , of movement through space that was lacking in my stationary experience was inherent by their movements around the room.
Some of those other audience members even held my attention. I wondered what they were thinking. Where they comfortable? Had they managed to cast off their work day tensions during the yoga-esque welcome before the performance had started? Were they aware of being watched?
We did play a game in the foyer before the show: guess the type of audience someone was going to be. Turns out we were rubbish at that game, but suffice to say, anyone could have taken part.
Not for me. It seemed to be saying: look at us – we are using technology to create a state of sharing, isn’t this great! But what it actually did was prove how technology is robbing us of the true connection between (in this case) dancer and watcher. It showed how the use of technology isolates and channels and prescribes under the guise of offering insight and freedom of choice.
And in hindsight I am glad that there was some vestige left of the shared performance offered by a trip to the theatre and that I didn’t, as I earlier suggested, get a VR headset delivered in the post. That would have been a much darker space!
Did it raise a whole load of really interesting questions?
Hell Yes! A lifetime’s worth, a career’s worth
Would I choose to experience the next creation by Clemence Debaig and Unwired Dance Theatre?
Hell Yes! There is a journey to be discovered here, just not on one night.
Note to future audiences to Where We Meet: I would definitely buy a promenade ticket next time: installations need to be walked round. And the whole participatory question is really redundant. You still get to chose.
A shout out too to The Cockpit Theatre. An excellent venue with friendly staff, comfortable seats and pleasant public spaces.
Interestingly their next production is Hamlet. I was minded to wonder if you could do a production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead during a performance of Hamlet allowing the audience to switch focus using Unwired’s tech!
You see? Tonnes of questions.
By the way, check out ECHOES by dancer Ryan Naiken (Adam).
Unwired Dance Theatre presented:
Where We Meet
28th February 2025 – 2nd March 2025, The Cockpit, London (16 performances across three days)
- Co-director & Choreographer: Livia Massarelli
- Co-director & Creative Technology Lead: Clemence Debaig
- Writer: Emma Nuttall
- Music Composer: Christina Karpodini
- Dancers: Sara Augieras, Ryan Naiken, Livia Massarelli
- Voice Artists: Caterina Grosoli, Lisa Ronkowski, Iain Ferrier, Zoë Trassl
- Creative Technologist: Branden Faulls
- Other Contributors: Steph Clarke, Noelle Lahaye, Samuel Lepoil, Julie Rollin-Mousteou, Vas Papageorgakopoulos, Hilltops Recording, Rob Hall
