Congregation
25~31/5│Friday to Thursday│8pm to 10pm
Tap Siac Square
Free admission
Nominated for a Northern Art Prize and a Prix Ars Electronica and chosen to represent the UK on National Day at the Shanghai World Expo 2010.
Artistic Team: Tom Wexler and Kit Monkman Technical Team: Kester McClure Music: Peter Broderick
Congregation is the world’s first ever ballet designed, choreographed and composed entirely for pedestrian performers; participants simply respond to the choreography of light and sound in an embodied, rather than verbal, discourse. Congregation illuminates the responses of humans
when their environment is interrupted by the arrival of a lone figure (The Angel). This figure cannot communicate and appears powerless, but at the same time it is utterly immovable, and as such is perceived as super-human, as powerful as any force of nature. Our human need to believe – to attribute meaning, to understand our environment – leads us to make extraordinary attempts to relate to this enigmatic presence, and we fall quickly upon universal patterns of religion, spirituality and faith. Communities form as consensus develops, and factions seek to confirm their specific relationship with the visitor by defining their differences from each other. Should this visitor depart, are we willing to accept that what seemed permanent was merely an apparition – that we were fooled, and foolish – or was the power in the shared experience sufficient to outlive the trigger? Will we miss our visitor, or rejoice in the reaction that was catalysed?
Duration: approximately 25 minutes. Performances at 30 minute intervals.
An Official UK NOW Event
In partnership with:
