Loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey, Marshmallow Laser Feast’s light installation lit the primary performance space within the chapel’s hazy internal dome. Grid-like projections crossed with mobile structures (designed by the architectural practice Studio Weave) as agile bodies crept over, in and through the many lit towers and surfaces. This first act was seen by the audience from the left and right balconies above. The second act, down flights of rope-lined staircases in the concrete basement, was more disorienting, lit only with triangular neon tubing and an eerie glow that seeped from an open door. The style of dance, in keeping with the more rapid and percussive score, by Canadian composer Christopher Mayo and electronic music composer / performer Anna Meredith, confronted the audience and was staged without boundaries dividing the dancers (some of whom were in street clothes) and viewers.
Subsequent acts included a spinning mirror-centric piece that toyed with reality, altering the circular form with careful lighting to flip between a reflective and semi-transparent surface, and an act that brought the spinning architectural structures together to form an artistic interpretation of a ship’s ribcage and sail. The final scene, once again in the venue’s hull, falls in line with The Odyssey’s conclusion and sees Penelope and Odysseus reunited in dance.
Principal dancer / producer Malgorzata Dzierzon said that the choreography ‘responds to the building, to its history’, a statement which rang true throughout. The dancing was exemplary yet the impact of the choreography came from the space, the voyeuristic feeling given to the audience on their individual adventures through the building in the penultimate act – to experience a bay of pigs; a room filled with beanbags for viewing animator Filipe Alçada’s dripping flowers projected on the ceiling; and a piece where a dancer was trapped like a fly within lengths of elastic.
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