Dance: Ghost in the machine

Anti-Body
director-choreographer Alexander Whitley
composers-producers Hannah Peel & Kincaid
with Joshua Attwood, Hannah Ekholm, Chia-Yu Hsu
interactive visuals Uncharted Limbo Collective
lighting Sarah Danielle Martin
costumes Juliette Ho
dramaturg Patrick Eakin Young
Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler's Wells, London • 6-8.Oct.22

Springing from a fascinating idea about the next step in human evolution, this evocative piece is visually dazzling in its use of dance, music, motion capture technology, lighting and projection. Although perhaps what makes it intriguing is what it suggests about the future of performance art, because the show itself feels more experimental than engaging. 

The central idea is stated in flickering on-screen text, tracing how humans have been driven through history by religion, then humanism, and now data. Indeed today, consciousness can reside in a silicon computer chip. So creator Alexander Whiteley puts his performers into a space that's both real and virtual, forcing the audience to watch the on-stage dancers within the technology.

It's assembled from a series of short scenes with blackout transitions, featuring three gifted dancers who throw shapes to a rhythmic score. They are captured by sensors and rendered in a wide range of striking monochrome animation styles that are projected onto screens both in front of and behind the performers. Cleverly, this means that we are seeing the dancers both through the images and surrounded by them, as projections both echo and expand upon their movements.

The visual effect is gorgeous, sharply well-performed by dancers who are adept at bending and arching to maintain a powerful sense of tension. The projections range from sharp line renditions to loose forms and geometric shapes, plus extraordinary swirling mists that seem to emerge into the space in 3D. The combination of light, movement and sound is visceral and often jaw-dropping, even if there's little sense of progression from beginning to end.

The idea that the human soul can be captured within technology and then drive its expression has a strong resonance, and it comes through vividly in these various sequences, which emerge as living, breathing abstract paintings. But perhaps some connective tissue between them would have added an engaging emotional punch, and also a sense of what's being gained and lost in the process.

photos by Sodium Bullet • 7.Oct.22