The Phoenix Theatre hosted ‘Kindling’ by the Glasshouse Dance Collective on Saturday 11th July, with a group of four dancers performing a variety of contemporary pieces over an hour.
It’s been a while since I’ve been in the audience for a performance of just dance, and this was such an engaging re-introduction to the craft. It was an intimate experience with the four dancers and a small, but enthusiastic audience. The location being the Phoenix Theatre in Coniston added to that homely feeling, with the theatre having seen decades of all kinds of performances and proudly displaying its history to all who come through its doors.
Dance can be and mean anything, and these particular pieces were a mix of timeless and timely, having been restaged since their original performances over the last few years.
I enjoyed the use of props throughout the show, with the first dance ‘My Battery is Low’ using a variety of random inanimate objects with faces drawn or stuck on to help drive the emotion of the piece.
My favourite piece was ‘Sloprot 2.0’ – the final section of the evening. Not only was it dynamic in terms of movement, sound design, lighting design and the way each dancer interacted with the others and the elements, but it also created humour through absurdity while delivering an important message. I found that piece to be particularly captivating as the dancers “taught” the generative AI about dance and themselves, and the glitchy imitation from the technology that responded. It was so interesting to see their portrayal of a large language learning model and how it learnt in real time. It takes a lot of control to be so erratically out of control when moving, especially as a collective and when performing tricks and other calisthenics-based movements. It was funny watching an inflatable pool be brought onstage, when all the audience could see were a pair of legs from the calves down performing moves typically seen in ballet, only for Mara Glass to turn around in a snorkel mask and unceremoniously dump the pool onto the stage before climbing into it. This was in such stark contrast to the seriousness of the previous dances and their themes. It gave the audience a moment of reprieve before diving back in (excuse the pun) to the dangers of relying on ChatGPT and other AI tools for the most mundane of tasks or outlandish things like asking it to be your friend, or to find ways to sneak around and do immoral things to the people you love, and more.
This was an interesting collaboration of contemporary dance by some very impressive artists, and each of them should be very proud of their work. I would encourage people to keep an eye out for more performances from Glasshouse Dance Collective, as well as other dance companies in general as it is such a rich field of art and a nice change of pace from daily life.
To book tickets to Kindling, please visit https://glasshousedance.org/events/shows/kindling/.
