©Tristram Kenton
Co-created by Michael ‘Mikey J’ Assante, Danny Boyle, Es Devlin, Sabrina Mahfouz 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.
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 