Innovative Dance Project comes to Sherman Cymru

Interview: Please Switch On Your Mobile Phones

TaikaBox

Innovative dance company TaikaBox are dedicated to the use of technology to make  the art form more accessible to a wider audience. The company was established in 2005 by dancer Tanja Raman and technical wizard John Collingswood. I was lucky enough to have a chat with John about their exciting new project Please Switch on Your Mobile Phones.

Please Switch On Your Mobile Phones is part of the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Wales that hopes to use technology to increase audience participation and engagement with work.

Through collaboration with Moon the company have created a system that allows audience members to interact with and contribute to the piece of dance they are watching. Each audience member will be asked to log on to a local network through their phone or tablet and contribute a short story. Five of these stories will then be transformed into a dance piece that the audience continues to change and comment upon throughout the event.

So John can you tell me a bit more about the project?    

Well it’s being promoted as a ‘creative social experiment’.  We have to strike a balance between all the elements involved; it’s a show and an experiment and research and a work in progress. It’s all about how we can use technology to encourage new audiences to see the work and also to get people to engage on a deeper level with what they have seen. Dance can really put people off and we want to create a social, hands-on experience that anyone can enjoy.

What are the aims of this project?

The aims are pretty simple really. One, will it encourage more people to see dance and increase dance audiences. Two, do the audience feel more engaged, emotionally engaged. This is about the depth in simplicity, so by going into depth with the audience we want them to emotionally respond to what happens. A research consortium will be involved to find out if we reach those aims and they will be doing things like focus groups to find out how we do.

You have already done a ‘test night’ for the project, how did that go?

It was brilliant. There was only a very small audience, about 16 people or so. What was really exciting was that people were actually talking to each other. They were discussing what was going on and really getting involved. Those conversations are what the work is all about.

Why use a closed network to encourage participation rather than Twitter or Facebook?

The system has been specially designed; it is a bespoke system for this project. It allows continuous audience feedback throughout the event and encourages dialogue between the creators and the audience. The system will guide the audience through the different stages of the live event, allowing us to show them images they can respond to or ask them to vote for a specific detail of the final dance piece. At certain moments different individuals will also be given control over sections of the lighting board and sound system. They can choose to work together or against each other, the dancers could be in complete darkness.

Who will be performing the work created throughout the night?

There are five company dancers who will be at every event. In Sherman Cymru we will also be working with dance students from Cardiff Metropolitan University and some professional performers. In total there will be between 20-25 dancers onstage working in different groups. Tanja will be overseeing the live creative process; she has a great way of encouraging open, collaborative work.

 

How have the dancers trained for such an unusual project?

We will be working on the whole research project for about 10 months, but 3 months in we need a “product” of sorts to take out to audiences. We have a week with the dancers onstage before the public come in and have their say. During this time they are learning skills to use in the developing process. Tanja creates great learning environments and the rehearsal will be all about peer teaching and learning. The process itself will be very simple, as simple as possible, and the dancers will be given the confidence, tools and structures to create the work under pressure. They will have a sort of toolbox of processes to make the event as easy as possible for them.

Will the dance pieces created during the events have a life after this project?

Probably not, no. This experiment is all about the there and then. Each night will be completely different, completely unique. This work is shared with the audience, it’s important that they feel shared authorship in what is developed, the work is for them, by them on that night. Later in the project, the work will also be streamed live on the internet allowing people who are outside the traditional theatre space to get involved too. A film company will also be documenting the process so some of the pieces may be seen through that, but it is all about the audience and the conversations had that night.

This is such an innovative project there must be a lot to worry about, what is your biggest fear for the performances?

There are the obvious concerns like, will the technology work? But it’s more exciting than worrying. It’s all about pushing yourself and really engaging in the collaborative process. It’s exciting to relinquish control and start a conversation with the audience!

Please Switch on Your Mobile Phones will be at :

Sherman Theatre, Cardiff: 26/04/14
Emily Davies Studio, Aberystwyth University: 27/06/14
Y Ffwrnes, Llanelli: 26/09/14

To get tickets for the performance at Sherman Cymru click here.

For more info on the show or the company click here.