| What: autoplay presented by Darkroom Contemporary Dance Theatre When: September 10 – 28, 2024 Where: Longkloof Studios in Cape Town Bookings: Quicket Choreography, direction and set design: Louise Coetzer Performers: Bronwyn Craddock, Darion Adams, Vuyelwa Phota, Gabrielle Fairhead, Tamsyn Pretorius and Inge Beckmann Original score: Brydon Bolton and Njabulo Phungula and vocalist Inge Beckmann Age advisory: 13+ Good to know: Ample secure undercover parking is available at Longkloof Studios. The fountain on Longkloof Square serves as the meeting point before the performance. There will be a special Heritage Day performance on September 24 at 16h00. This is followed by an Artist Talk and Q&A session with the artistic team and performers |
“autoplay transforms the stage into a playground of possibilities, where each performance reshapes and redefines the performers’ digital selves”, says Louise Coetzer about Darkroom Contemporary Dance Theatre’s autoplay which is on in Cape Town at Longkloof Studios. Coetzer is artistic director of Darkroom Contemporary, and director of autoplay (direction, choreography and design). I would say, that beyond playground, ultra is battleground, with bodies slapping against each other, filling into lines and columns. By the end of the performance, the stage area looks like it has been the scene of a battle. Interview: https://thecaperobyn.co.za/interview-darkroom-contemporary-dance-theatres-autoplay-transforming-the-stage-into-a-playground-of-possibilities/
The catalyst for autoplay was AI – artificial intelligence and how we are battling for identity and autonomy in this world with so much flux and possibility. The performance starts from when one arrives at the venue – Longkloof Studios – a film studio – and in a dimly lit room- there are screens with looping text – musing about the process of creating autoplay- using AI as a jump off point. Then one proceeds to the performance in another room – a triple warehouse volume space – with concrete floors. The dance is brilliant – very athletic and acrobatic. The interplay of shadows, voice (including a howling kind of opera) and sound is a sensory stimulation on steroids.
At times, I felt overwhelmed and wasn’t sure where to direct my gaze. It is like being slapped from multiple directions. There are six scenes which confront “questions of agency, autonomy, influence and the blurred boundaries between free will and manipulation in a digital age. The scenes move between moments of play, satire and absurdity, unfolding as a dialectical interplay between the corporeal and the virtual, unraveling the intricate threads of human digitization.” https://thecaperobyn.co.za/interview-darkroom-contemporary-dance-theatres-autoplay-transforming-the-stage-into-a-playground-of-possibilities/ In the beginning scenes, the dancers slap themselves and use their bodies as percussion instruments. They create part of the sound. This thumping ties into one of the motifs of soldiers in columns. There is a frenzied game of musical chairs, with chairs on coasters. Green apples are played with, balanced, tossed, munched on in an absurdist sequence. They figures are muzzled by the apples, muted. Submissive children sit on classroom chairs, falling into lines and then falling down like a pack of cards, as in crowd surfing at a concert.
A beautiful element is the live drawing beamed via an old fashioned overhead projector. It is very old school in relation to the technology in the piece, digital imaging, live sampling of sound by Brydon Bolton, which is “reshaped through digitised processing”. This is very much an immersive dance theatrical experience- waiting in the waiting room – flooded by the spools of text on screens and then being invited to enter the performance space. Take a paper aeroplane which are in cubby holes in the waiting room and wait for the cue to toss them onto stage. My planes were imprinted with: 6.1. integration and and 6.2. isolation. There is a wonderful sense of play as we the audience aim our planes at the stage. We become part of the performance, integrating with the performance, piercing through our isolation and there isolation as automatons.
Autoplay is an intensely cerebral piece but it is also hyper visceral. I sat there, decoding and watching for cues, watching signs in the live drawings. At other times, I was pulled into the bizarre troupe on stage and I stopped analysing. The androgynous figures look like robots, dummies, automatons, dolls. Automatons are “moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human beings”, I looked it up [https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/] and this is what this troupe of figures conveys. They are ciphers, clowns and acrobats as they beguile us. They transition from a robotic state – their wigs and costumes become disheveled. They are not robots, they assure us as they loop in and around each other. They are on autoplay – seemingly without agency – and yet they continually break out of their columns and lines as they try to verify themselves as human. At the end, in the battleground, they have shed their sameness as they retrieve aspects of their identity- as human being. Their mechanical effigies have been shed to an extent, through the creative act of making art; making theatre. There is a lot to process in autoplay. I would love to see this extraordinary piece of dance theatre again.
