It is great to see AVIVA STUDIOS showing a big explosive production fresh from Edinburgh Fringe 2023. Award winning Danish company Fix+Foxy unite with a cast of South African performers to open the history books that celebrate the birth of the American Dream and gleefully rip it up and rewrite the story. Film and Television endlessly celebrate the first settlers, the brave battles protecting “their” land from the Native American tribes, the thrill of the Gold Rush and the romance of the cowboys riding out on the frontier plain. DARK NOON exposes the mythology and is a darkly funny and brutal reimagining.
DARK NOON Image credit: Søren Meisner
The Warehouse plays host to a vast bare stage depicting the rich red soil of the Wild West. The audience sit on three sides of the stage with the fourth dominated by a massive screen on which many of the scenes play out in close up. Somehow the cast of seven seem to fill the space with action from the onset. At times props appear as small vignettes are played out as chapters of history. The first settlers take their perilous journey from Europe starving, sick and often drowning. Its a powerful reminder of what migrants are suffering right now as they seek their own to fulfil their own dream of a better future. Finding and claiming land they protect it fiercely from the indigenous population. At one point the stage becomes a sports stadium where the live commentary is broadcast as the Settlers play the Natives with brutal consequences.
The props on stage grow almost imperceptibly, first a little house on the prairie appears, a railway track is built by Chinese immigrants signalling the arrival of a saloon bar, a church, a gold mine and a barb wire enclosure for the Native Americans. All is deftly done with a fluid , muscular choreography and the pace of the action never falters. Audience members are interacted with and frequently immersed into the performance as slaves in the auction, churchgoers or incarcerated prisoners.
Throughout the frequent costume changes the performers reapply their white-face make up and blonde wigs as they poke fun at the imperious settlers who now seem as misguided and out of touch with reality as the current contenders for the next American presidency. Writer and Director Tue Biering has zeroed in on the terrifying reality that a mass historical psychosis where violence becomes the acceptable norm is not the dream but a living nightmare. DARKNOON lays bare uncomfortable truths and pulls its audience quite literally unto the pages of a terrifying pop-up storybook that is still being written today.
Afrique en Cirque. Kalabanté Productions at Aviva Studios. Image credit: Peter Graham
KALABANTÉ PRODUCTIONS
The Hall, AVIVA STUDIOS
The latest extravaganza to mark the launch of Aviva Studios in the city is The Welcome a series of events curated by local people across Greater Manchester selected as part of The Assembly. Many of these events happening between the 11-19th November are free to the public and others are affordably priced. Afrique en Cirque celebrates everyday life in Western Africa as it zeroes in on coastal village life in Guinea. Devised by Montreal based circus Kalabanté Productions this is an unadulterated expression of joy and physical prowess that is at times as mind bending as it is literally body bending.
The staging of an African village looks invitingly beautiful and the lighting is gorgeous. Village huts are peopled by musicians while the front of the wide stage of The Hall lends itself perfectly to the endless series of tumbling routines that blend with tribal inspired dance, juggling, hoop and human pyramids that erupt on stage without anyone appearing to ever draw breath. This might be a show that casually started on African time but once it gets going it’s exuberance and high energy is unrelenting.
Afrique en Cirque. Image credit: Wendell Teodoro
Yamoussa Bangoura established this circus company in 2007 to celebrate African culture and circus. There are no high wires or safety equipment other than crash mats and the performers seem gleefully unbothered by the very real risks involved in much of their routines. One strides around with another performer casually standing on their head while the contortionist bends in ways that can have seemingly scant regard for their own body in 10 years time. The ensuing result is an extraordinary exhibition of human skill and endurance that also paints a vibrant image of village life. Routines are developed around market bartering, fishing expeditions and storytelling that all play out with colourful costume changes and live music from the live band. Afro jazz style music is performed with guitar and saxophone blending with traditional West African percussion and the beautiful kora.
There are some gorgeous moments such as the dreamy balletic hoop routine with the spinning cyr wheel. There is cheeky humour in a routine involving hard hats and a human pyramid that is an impudent nod to The Chippendales/ The Full Monty. The sheer athleticism and energy is invigorating and the performers are multi talented as they also take on some of the percussion and singing as well. The music and singing is utterly infectious and has numerous young children dancing in the aisles in this relaxed performance. The audience is involved and encouraged to engage in callbacks as we learn little bits of the Guinea dialect Susu…I now know that naani is four and suli is five thanks to a playful juggling routine.
This is a production that has played all over the world and in doing so is a reminder of what a rich and varied culture exists in Africa. It’s also a lovely reminder that communal joy and gasps of awe can be universal whether in Manchester, Manéah or Montreal.
Co-created by Michael ‘Mikey J’ Assante, Danny Boyle, Es Devlin, SabrinaMahfouz and Kenrick ‘H20′Sandy
Commissioned by FACTORY INTERNATIONAL
AVIVA STUDIOS
The first ever Manchester International Festival launched in 2007 and quickly established a reputation for promoting and creating ambitious new works. Artistic Director John McGrath took over from Alex Poots in 2015 when the idea for a permanent building was already being floated. Fast forward to now and from the ashes of the old Granada Studios and with an eye watering bill of approximately £242 million Factory International finally opens the doors of Aviva Studios. Devised by Danny Boyle, Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante, Es Devlin, Sabrina Mahfouz and Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy; the show to launch the building is FREE YOUR MIND. It is a huge scale hip hop dance homage to iconic movie The Matrix via a tribute to Manchester’s proud industrial past and reputation for innovation.
The first half is in the Hall and opens with a vast blackboard filled with equations…its a lecture theatre and one of the great founders of computer intelligence, Alan Turing, is giving a lecture via an old black and white TV screen. A quick lesson on the birth of the computer age and Manchester’s role, takes us even further back to the 1700s and Arkwright and the birth of the industrial age. Staccato pulsing bodies flood the stage and Turing is gone leaving the legacy that will be The Matrix and hinting at the A.I. world we now inhabit. The first of many dramatic shifts occurs as the back of stage is punctured with light beams as the punch cards of the first Jacquard loom are replicated. Dancers appear sheathed like gossamer condoms that stretch up and connect to the ceiling. Beautifully lit they weave through each other like a maypole of lost souls. Each dance piece has drama and demands attention. Neo appears, as does the red wigged Trinity clad in glistening black PVC. Bowler hatted dancers in rubber ridged trousers appear like futuristic Bertie Bassets and a wraith-like dancer performs in front of a glistening golden orb punctuated with the holes of bullets or punch cards of computers or grafting workers. The trial of the first computer charged with killing a human is a brutal annihilation with murderlous beams of light. An aerial performer swings across the stage as black discs of destruction rain down.
Suddenly its time to follow the white rabbits through to an interval filled with Matrix inspired figures suspended in mid air while grooving rabbits dance and workers silently graft at machines. The tannoy announces time to divide the audience and blue wristbands go one way and red through a different route into the Warehouse.
Stark and minimalist the vast space is wrapped in white cotton, possibly a nod to Manchester’s historic role in the cotton industry. Running through the middle is a huge white runway suggesting a futuristic fashion runway or conveyor belt. Screens running its full length project images of the building of the Mancunion Way, Ian Curtis, Tony Wilson and the old Granada Studios to the pulsing sound of Blue Monday by New Order. As the screens raise the dancers start to emerge. Before the final battle scenes of The Matrix the runway looks like a bizarre fashion show of costumes by Gareth Pugh fashioned to showcase Apple and Amazon rather than Armani, Twitter and Facebook instead of Tom Ford. These images are startling and darkly funny as they reflect our current human obsessions with consumerism technology and social media. They are all the more potent as audience member immediately try to capture whats happening on stage on their phones.
Dancers karate kick their way down the runway and choreographer Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy makes for a molten and mighty Morpheus. The ultimate scenes with Neo (Corey Owens) and Trinity (Nicey Belgrave) play out in a flurry of bullets of light and coding. It’s truly a spectacular sight that is powerfully impacted by the incredible lighting and video design by Lucy Carter and Luke Halls.
A scene from Free Your Mind. Commissioned and produced by Factory International @ Aviva Studios. Credit: Tristram Kenton
This show is a theatrical extravaganza that is all about showing off and celebrating being here in this brand new space in this city that so many of us love. FREE YOUR MIND isn’t a seamless production telling a cohesive and fully comprehensible story. It’s clear that it’s been in development for almost as long as it’s taken to get the building from concept to construction. It involves a wide range of creatives imagining a work for a stage that wasn’t even built and with a vision of creating something that was about possibilities for what could develop in this new space…about creative possibilities that are yet to be imagined. I like the unabashed joy of opening the doors to the playroom, ushering in the kids and saying Explore! Imagine! Play! This is a huge production using both the 1600 seater theatre and the vast warehouse space that could accommodate a Boeing 747. This is all about spectacle and showing off what these spaces will creatively allow us to do in Manchester. There is an incredible sound system in a building that can seamlessly adapt to different sized audiences in productions that could scale 64metres long and 21 metres wide and accommodate 5000 people while also allowing for floors that can flood and drain. The second half evokes one of my favourite MIF openings when in 2017 Jeremy Deller premiered What Is the City but the People when 100 people walked a gigantic walkway in Piccadilly Gardens celebrating Mancunions from all walks of life. Artistic Director John McGrath and his team have a shared vision for this new building and for Manchester…Invent Tomorrow Together. Let’s hope that FREE YOUR MIND is truly a gateway to new possibilities and just a taste of what is yet to come.
Live Art Alive 