A spotlight lights the darkness. A man stands before you, centre stage.
He is twitching. He is covering his face, protecting his body. He is violently fighting the side to side convulsions that twist and contort his body. Deep bass rumbles, strobing lights begin – casting shadows, figures and silhouettes. Relentless, unforgiving possession controls the man but the sights and sounds overcome you. Should you be scared, should you help? You are blinded by bright house lights that fall to sudden darkness. Music swells and the man is gone. A swarm of drone lights appear where he once stood, dancing in unison.
This is the opening to Australasian Dance Collective’s new show 'Lucie In The Sky'. An unapologetically dramatic and animatic production exploring new frontiers of technology and the arts.
The show is a first of its kind. There are five drone characters and six humans and it is exploring the forming of relationships between both. The production embodies a strong cinematic quality; in the sense of it being unreal. Imagine watching the 'widescreen' stage as autonomous machines and humans play together. It seems like something only possible with complex CGI and movie magic.
Each drone has a three minute battery life requiring 48 drones to perform the one hour show. The drones are painstaking and manually pre-programmed to dance. It cannot be underestimated how much work is involved in this programming. The humans dance equally as precisely (sometimes within centimetres) to bring the relationships to life. Dancer Harrison Elliott states working with the drones is “like puppetry”. This “puppet-work” and precision brings an extreme sense of realism to their interactions.
Impressive choreography varies between character personalities making you always wonder what is next. Sometimes the human movements feel. . . Robotic. . . And sometimes the drone flows in such a human-like rhythm. Perhaps, is there even a difference?
Image © David Kelly
'Lucie In The Sky' is a complete ensemble. The dancers (human and robot), costume design by Harriet Oxley, stage design and lighting by Alexander Berlage and original music by Wil Hughes all deserve individual mentions. They each greatly enhance the experience. I felt so lucky and proud to sit in a theatre to see such a production home-grown in Brisbane.
Psychology is one piece of 'Lucie In The Sky' core – the exploration of the potentially boundless relationships between humans and autonomous machines. An exhausted drone follows a dancer. Frightened, the dancer cowers to the blinding, bright, blue light. It approaches slowly but seems to show no aggression in its movement. The dancer crawls away in fear and collapses, vulnerable. The drone hovers, and the dancer reaches out. It too collapses out of the sky and into the dancer's hands. You may form your own opinion on the relationship, but I almost cried at that moment.
I am very excited to see what is next. 'Lucie In The Sky' comes at a very interesting time in history. With the dawn of AI and robotics, the very questions it asks are on the forefront of peoples’ minds. There definitely would be much more to explore in another production. This production explores one-on-one drone and human relationships. I wholeheartedly enjoy it, but would like to see more drones next time. It would increase novelty (and workload) but also spectacle. I feel carving out some of the characters more, maybe focusing on two or three, could create a stronger distinction in the choreography. These thoughts were echoed by Artistic Director Amy Hollingsworth in the after-show Q&A. . . Clearly she knows exactly where to take things next.
This won’t be the last we see of 'Lucie In The Sky'.
