Digital dancers connect the country

McGregor's work fuses body and technology

By Robert Andrews BBC News Online

Digital dancers are reuniting a divided nation in radical virtual space, using high-speed telephone lines, projectors and streaming video

Culture and media critic Marshall McLuhan, who coined the term "global village", once prophesied new technologies would obliterate geography.

With its north and south divided by distance, linguistic and transport barriers, Wales has managed to do that all by itself.

Leave it to dance, of all, things, to digitally pick up the pieces and put them back together in a dramatic reconstruction of McLuhan's prediction.

McGregor jumps barriers and pushes boundaries

Exciting new contemporary production Game Of Halves re-unites the two hemispheres of the Welsh world on giant video walls at either end of the country, creating an innovative performance which is one part real, one part virtual.

Brainchild of acclaimed choreographer Wayne McGregor, dancers from National Youth Dance Wales and Random Dance of London take part in the same performance from two locations.

Remote control

Half of the 60 dance at Cardiff's Sherman Theatre, the other half 219 miles away at Mold's Clwyd Theatre Cymru.

Each group's performance is relayed via a high-speed, two-way ISDN telephone line to a giant video wall projection behind dancers at either site, creating a unified piece from disparate, remote parts.

It's all about connecting north and south Wales and connecting young dancers across the country

Pauline Crossley

The result, says McGregor, is "a futuristic chess game, the players competing from different locations" as they appear, life-like, integrated with the dancers before the audience.

A rising star of modern dance, he has already stepped deftly into the limelight to integrate technology in his art with productions like The Millenarium and Sulphur 16, melding digital and real bodies.

And he is pioneering virtual characters which learn steps for themselves on screen, questioning our relationship with automatic technology.

Dance space

But, in Game Of Halves on the Welsh outreach project, McGregor directs human dancers who merely appear virtual but are always real flesh and blood.

The question the choreographer asks is - what "space" do we occupy when we videoconference, e-mail, chat on the phone, or dance on the digital wires? And is the setting for the dance real space or cyberspace?

Where are we when we are on the phone?

The answer, says NYDW officer Pauline Crossley, is "a hybrid of both".

"That makes it a very exciting event. The remote dancers appear virtual because a gauze is hung over the screens," she says, buoyantly.

Her organisation is the newest part of arts education group National Youth Arts Wales, which gives hundreds of young people performance experience in theatre, orchestras, brass bands, choirs and chamber orchestras.

"It comes at a time at which digital technologies are very exciting and accessible by young people," Crossley adds.

Moving partnerships

"But this is the first time we have used new technology in a meaningful way.

"Connections is the message. It's all about connecting north and south Wales and connecting young dancers across the country.

"It is a wonderful opportunity to use the creative potential of new technology.

It is like a futuristic chess game

Wayne McGregor

"Wayne is pushing all the time and finding new ways of working with whatever tools he can find."

McGregor has been posting monthly dance steps to the production's website for amateurs to try at home, some steps informing the eventual choreography.

The site users have met up in real space, too, at summer workshops in Bangor, Mostyn and Cardiff to rehearse, leading to a 10-day residential course in which auteurs from Random Dance offered tuition to the Welsh amateurs.

The result is the unification of a Wales divided by distance, misconception and the sprawling Cambrian Mountains.

Connecting, Narnia-like, either end of two distant worlds, it is the most potent recent artistic indication of how new technology can bridge geographical and cultural divides.

Game Of Halves at Sherman Theatre, Cardiff (029 20 646900), and Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Mold (01352 755114) - 1 and 2 August, 2002.