SADLER’S Wells Theatre, London’s preminent venue for contemporary dance, makes a triumphant post-lockdown return with Overflow. This new production by the trailblazing choreographer Alexander Whitley will debut at the theatre, running for only two nights – Friday 21 and Saturday 22 May. Created a year before the pandemic, Overflow was set to open in 2020 but was delayed twice due to lockdown. The delay has only raised expectations for what should be a thrilling performance.
Whitley, who is a New Wave Associate at Sadler’s Wells, is known for his groundbreaking dance experiences that experiment heavily with technology. Overflow includes a dazzling kinetic light sculpture by Children of the Light which has been programmed by creative technologist Luca Biada. The cloud-like sculpture will move over the dancers’ heads, seemingingly tracking their movements across the stage.
Costumes and 3D-printed masks inspired by facial recognition technology have been devised by award-winning designer Ana Rajcevic and sounds come courtesy of electronic music producer Rival Consoles.
Glass spoke with Alexander Whitley ahead of the two-night performance. Be sure to get a ticket!
Sadler Well’s Theatre. Photograph: Johan Persson
What was the starting point for Overflow?
A lot of my work explores how digital technology influences our experience of the world and in Overflow I was interested in the idea that the explosion of data, information and communication we’ve seen since the advent of the internet has, contrary to expectations, made the world a lot harder to understand, more unstable and in many respects quite strange.
The work is centred around a kinetic light sculpture by Children of the Light. How was this idea developed?
Overflow is my third collaboration with Children of the Light and the idea for this sculpture is really the culmination of several years of conversations and experimentation. It was always our desire to have the sculpture act as the seventh dancer in the piece, allowing the conversation between the human and the technological to play out through movement.
Having the sculpture move around the stage, above and between the dancers, has enabled us to do quite unique things in terms of how the dancers are lit as well as bringing a visual element which represents the dazzling allure of digital technology.
Overflow seems to focus on – and critique – the level of control that technology has over how we live, in the form of algorithms and surveillance, for instance. Does dance – which can perhaps be seen as the freedom that the body has to move as it wishes – act as a challenge to this?
Yes. The relationships between freedom and control, thought, emotion and action are for me the strong connecting points between this subject matter and dance. A dance practice is based on making conscious choices about how we move our bodies, and repeating these actions endlessly in order to make them habit and refine our awareness of how to execute them.
The algorithms behind social platforms tap into this same process of habituation by recognising patterns in how we respond to the content that’s placed in front of us. They operate at a pre-conscious level though, stimulating our emotions and triggering movements before we’ve had time to think, forming habits around unconscious patterns of action.
Physical and mindful practices, which increase our awareness of the nature of thought, action and emotion are for me the best antidote to the negative tendencies of the technologies that are becoming an increasingly dominant feature of our lives.
Sadler Well’s Theatre. Photograph: Johan Persson
When did you start to consider the role of things such as AR, VR and video installations and begin to see their potential within your work? This, of course, led to your Digital Body project, which I understand was launched during lockdown.
The first VR production we made, Celestial Motion, was in 2018 but I’d been following developments in the technology keenly for some years, with past collaborators of mine, Marshmallow Laser Feast, doing pioneering work in this field.
These kinds of immersive technologies establish very different relationships between performers and spectators than exists in a conventional theatre setting and directly implicate the spectator and their movement in the performance experience.
I think dance and the history of choreographic thinking have a lot to bring to these platforms when thinking about the movement and direction of attention in space, and they in turn offer exciting new creative possibilities for dance. A lot of these possibilities lie in the way the moving body can be visualised once it’s been digitised (using motion-capture technology) and this is the enquiry underlying the Digital Body project.
How did you take care of your body during lockdown? Did you keep up a daily routine of practice or rely on any other types of movement / exercise? Everyone wants to know how a dancer maintains their physique.
I’ve tried to do as much yoga as possible, which is something I’ve practiced for a long time alongside my dance training. I find it very beneficial for all round physical and mental well-being. I’ve also been practicing some breathing techniques such as the Wim Hoff method and, like many people it seems, taken up running as a way of forcing myself to get out of the house!
by Derby Jones
Tickets for Overflow can be purchased via the Sadler’s Wells website.
To find out more about Digital Body and view the evolving online exhibition, visit the Alexander Whitley Dance Company website.