Inventive dance for a digital age
It’s befitting that a dance show taking place in a former lecture hall once frequented by lightbulb inventor Joseph Swan should portray the art of performance in a whole new light.
Southpaw Dance Company have taken over the Athenaeum Building for the Bank Holiday weekend to host performances of their show, Acedia, under the site’s glass roof.
It’s an innovative performance to launch the new chapter for the site as Breeze Creative redevelop part of the building on Fawcett Street into a new gallery and studio space.
Part live performance and part digital, Acedia is the third in a series of shows commissioned by Sunderland Culture to respond to, and try to make sense of, the pandemic.
Ticket holders are invited to watch the show partly through an iPad, sanitised and provided by the dance company, which has been programmed to show a digital element of the show.
So although a lone dancer occupies the real life space in front us, when you hold the iPad in front of you he’s joined by digital versions of himself.
In an age where we consume so much through a screen, it’s an interesting concept to split our gaze between real life and the digital world which unfold before us in synchronicity.
For the 30-minute show we enter the flat of Andrew, played by James South ward, as he navigates his way through the Lockdowns, from initially throwing himself into exercising and enjoying the slower pace of life to the encroaching loneliness many of us started to feel as the months dragged on.
As his drinking increases, we see him sluggishly slope around his flat trying to while away the hours, while four digitalAndrews perform on screen and echo his mood.
It’ s a script by Lee Matt in son which captures the zeitgeist of 2021, with thought-provoking direction from Rob by Graham, which takes you through the gamut of emotions we all felt collectively through the pandemic, whilst simultaneously being alone, from the numbing re petition of ground hog days to the optimism of reconnecting with the world.
As well as watching the dance performance, people can use the iPad to unlock moving images of photos on the wall from previous Southpaw shows in an experience which is a strikingly interesting way of interpreting performance after a year when we lost the once very simple pleasure of live dance and theatre.
Acedia is the first of many cultural activities which will happen upstairs at the historic building in rooms which were previously empty.
It will house the Breeze Creative’ sm a in gallery, after it recently moved out of B am burgh House in Newcastle city centre. It will also be home to 40 artists’ studios, available to those in the creative sectors, such as visual arts, writing, game design and video arts.
Originally opened in 1843, The Athenaeum building was an important cultural hub for Sunderland, playing a vital role in the development of culture, design, engineering and photography in the region and hosted lectures by the Literary and Philosophical Society.
It’s one in a number of historic city centre buildings being given new life.
The Acedia performances take place this weekend until Sunday.
Tickets costing £8 are available from Sunderland Culture’swebsite(sunderlandculture.org.uk) but are limited to 15 per show.