Natalie Maria Clark’s tightly structured, disturbing new work for Black Sheep Productions , Apt Y Idos, is full of disconnection, dissociation and detachment, immersing the audience into a dystopian world dominated by television and cell phones, devices which have replaced face-to-face, in-person communication to the point where such interpersonal interactivity is a distant memory. The work provides a chilling perspective on human life minus its personal dimension, and invites the audience to inquire into what is being presented – how has it come to be this way, and how does it feel to be like that?.

Episodic in structure, Apt Y Idos presents a dozen or so scenarios in which non-communication is central. Some are more figurative, some entirely abstract, yet the foreboding weight of what is being presented is readily felt.

It’s ironic, of course, that these scenarios are being created through dance, by an ensemble who have to remain in very close proximity and in immediate visceral communication with each other throughout the presentation of the work, while at the same time embodying personas which are convincingly dissociative. Occasional unison segments require total immersion in micro-movement awareness of one another, and there are several rapid, rhythmically driven sections which show how strong their ensemble work can be across the floor.  All credit to the five dancers of Black Sheep Productions (Lydia Zanetti, Mattie Hamuera, Matthew Moore, Rosa Provost and Sarah Elsworth) for sustaining a somewhat schizoid state throughout the hour long performance,

There is no set as such, beyond a white dance floor and black curtains, and objects which are scattered or hanging from above. Clusters of eviscerated television monitors are scattered around the performance space, and these are endlessly rearranged by one or more performers in different configurations, mostly without any particular objective, though at one point they do comprise a circular arena within which action takes place. At times the monitors are worn as helmets which shield the individual wearer from social contact, or are placed over one’s head to symbolize the weight of the world on one’s shoulders.

An inflated plastic globe of Planet Earth hangs above the performance area, surrounded by dangling cell phones which turn slowly in the heat rising from the action below. The phones mostly remain just out of reach of the performers, though at one point Matthew grabs one and starts a business-related conversation which the others immediately disrupt by bombarding him with small inflatable plastic globes of the earth. And in perhaps the most chilling scene, Rosa and Mattie, unable to reach their phones to have a direct conversation, attempt to communicate face to face, body to body, with a somewhat agonising outcome.

The dancers wear loose skin-toned overlays over white underwear, designed by Jessica Lowe, with hennaed veins painted onto arms and legs by body artists Amelia Hitchcock and Magdalena O’Connor.  A sound score by Lucy Beeler and James Risbey runs the gamut from glitchy dubstep to an echoing, large arena anthem, with music cues often signaling the dissolve from one scenario to the next. Lighting design by Ruby Reihana-Wilson is in sympathy with the minimalist feel to things,   keeping skin glowing but also providing atmospheric contrasts.

This dystopian world is presented without judgement, and no alternatives are offered.

The degree to which you respond to this work as a timely warning, or reject it as “just another dance ” will no doubt depend on your own degree of reliance on your cell phone and Facebook and other digital devices and the relationships they make possible. Still, it raises issues which can only be addressed one person at a time, and it would seem hopeful that the work can have some salutary effect.

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