Dance: Into the void

Company Wayne McGregor
Deepstaria
director-choreographer-designer Wayne McGregor
dancers Rebecca Bassett-Graham, Naia Bautista, Kevin Beyer, Salvatore De Simone, Chia-Yu Hsu, Hannah Joseph, Jasiah Marshall, Jayla O’Connell, Mariano Zamora Gonzaléz
lighting Theresa Baumgartner
sound Nicolas Becker and LEXX
set Benjamin Males • costumes Ilaria Martello 
Sadler's Wells, London • 27.Feb-2.Mar.25 ★★★★

Taking its name from a genus of jellyfish, Deepstaria is a meditation on humanity's fascination with endless voids like the deep sea and outer space. Wayne McGregor gives his seriously impressive dancers demanding choreography that creates the impression of floating in weightlessness. And the set is a high-tech visual wonder, with inky blacks, dazzling lights and an audio mix that seems to send music and sounds right into our bones. It's an extraordinary experience for the audience, even if it's so intensely serious that emotional resonance feels just out of reach.

The dancers perform the otherworldly moves with unusual fluidity, seemingly floating as they stretch and spin around the stage. While there are a few sections featuring the entire nine-person company, much of this programme features solos and duets, plus a couple of intensely powerful trios. Each performer gets their moment to shine brightly. Movement is big, full-bodied and expressive, and the interaction is laced with subtle touches as dancers come together, sometimes echoing, competing or challenging each other. The highlight is an extended duet between two men that beautifully plays with balance and connection.

All of this takes place on a bare stage that is flooded with always moving lights, creating what looks like currents in the dancers' movements. The set may be made using Vantablack Vision, the light-absorbing coating that is used in telescopes, but it is thoroughly illuminated with lights that refract through constantly swirling mist. This adds to the sense of weightlessness and provides a couple of stunning moments, from a piercing light that breathes straight into our eyes to a shimmering rainfall effect that looks like magic.

Designed to make the most of the dancers' athleticism and physical grace, the costumes shift through the show, from black briefs to paper-thin sweats to tunics that are made from a translucent material called Japanese organza, which seems to drift in slow motion. They are transformed using coloured lighting, which maintains the show's continual shifting nature, as the movement switches from light and sweeping to sharply pointed, between solo numbers and communal pieces.

All of this is simply gorgeous to look at, performed with precision by the gifted dancers, while the complex sound mix is what guides us through a sense of emotional tonality. Intriguingly, this layered audio is programmed through the artificial-intelligence technology Bronze, which adds the unpredictability of live performance and could possibly be something live performers take exception to. But its visceral impact is undeniable.

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photos by Ravi Deepres • 27.Feb.25

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