Screening Ourselves: A Review of Mirror / Rite of Spring at Sadler’s Wells
- Apr 13
- 4 min read
Sofia Stefani
Mirror, a striking new contemporary dance piece from the Alexander Whitley Dance Company (AWDC), opens as an intimate duet. A pair of dancers take the stage, moving in fluid embrace as their performance begins. Immediately evident in their costume design, however, is a foreshadowing of technological disruption to their dance. The performance’s titular theme of interrogating the risks of developing an overreliance on artificial intelligence—an idea inspired by the book AI Mirror, by Shannon Vallor (although AI in what form?)—comes into focus as the dance progresses.
The two dancers wear motion capture suits with complementary black-and-white patterns. As they move through early steps, their matching costumes and symbiotic movements suggest that the dancers may metaphorically mirror each other, as their motions reflect similar energies. Suddenly, to ceremonial music, light projections appear on a transparent screen separating dancers from the audience. The introduction of this layer suggests we, as spectators, may occupy one side of a mirror—seeing ourselves reflected in the dancers—yet more to the point are coordinate boxes that soon appear on the screen. These boxes track the movement of the dancers through motion capture, over time evolving such that ghostly renderings of the human form slowly emerge within the boxes, before being ‘liberated’ from these constraints to move autonomously. The question remains of the extent to which these visuals remain beholden to the actions of the human dancers from whom they originated, or have agency of their own.
A partial answer to this question lies in a compelling moment when one ghostly figure disappears from the screen: its corresponding human adopts an expression of confusion, finding
herself untethered. Her partner, conversely, seems increasingly subservient to the motions of his avatar. Power dynamics shift on stage, culminating in a spectacular glitch. The dancer tied to his avatar repeatedly holds his head in his hands, his movements losing the fluidity of the early choreography, as he copies the choppy motions of the ever-growing, computer-generated being on screen. A high point in this performance is his energetic solo under flashing strobe lights, creating a dizzying sense of pixelated movement imposed on the human form.
This contemporary piece is well-choreographed, set to a score by Galya Bisengalieva that effectively shifts between melody and techno beats. However, I was unenthused at some points by the sense that current notions of technology constrained the performance’s envisioning of the future. Certain visual effects—floating numbers à la a digital alarm clock, and AI-generated imagery of fluidly shifting outdoor scenery—fell somewhat flat for their impression of retro technology rather than futuristic possibility. These montages felt more predetermined than prototypical and missed an opportunity to leverage image models that could have generated images live during each performance to create truly unique experiences.
One of the challenges of interrogating an AI-based ‘paradigm shift’ through performance, though a compelling goal given widespread concern and interest surrounding this event, is that performance art and dance have been described as art forms relatively insulated from the impact of automation: more difficult for a machine to replicate. This renders dance a curious, if expressive, medium through which to raise these concerns. Heavy use of AI-generated imagery on screen occasionally swamped the dancers themselves, reinforcing the warning of over-reliance on technology from Vallor’s book but diminishing the physicality of the performance. Perhaps the visual projections could have been handled with a lighter touch at times, and benefited from staying grounded in riffs on motion capture and the push-and-pull of power dynamics between dancer and avatar, which were well-executed.
The dance culminated with the reunion of the duo, as the influence of the digital avatars seemed to be dispelled by the return of the partner whose avatar had first disappeared. In a graceful moment of futuristic envisioning that partly addressed my above critique, the two dancers at last leapt hand in hand towards a portal projected on a second screen at the far end of the stage. The rhythm of their movement, their synchronicity, and the unknown of the black void in the digital projection distilled the action of the fifty-odd minute performance into an exhortation to enter a foreboding future together, even if we cannot yet see ourselves reflected there.
Following an intermission, the double bill resumed with an interpretation of Rite of Spring. AWDC reworked this ballet (first performed in 1913) to unite its themes of community and sacrifice with reckonings with human relationships and identity presented in Mirror.
Unlike in screen-dominant Mirror, this Rite of Spring featured one physical element of set design: a series of ropes hanging from the ceiling. As the curtain rose, blood-red light flooded over these ropes, revealing their arrangement in the configuration of a tree with gnarled roots; the set immediately conveyed the ballet’s original pastoral atmosphere and its focal theme of sacrifice. The first elements of choreography further linked Rite of Spring with Mirror, as the dancers—a condensed cast of five—sprang to life with the frenetic head-in-hands motion introduced by Mirror’s avatar.
The intensity of this Rite of Spring rendition built with sharp movements, steps so compelling that at times I forgot this performance, too, featured generated images shifting across the background screen. AI images of trees morphed into neurons (also a motif in Mirror) and then into eyes, adding an eerie quality of scrutiny to the ballet that felt consistent with its themes and intense musical programme, and left me curious about the prompting required to construct these digital sets. Here, a new form of artistic process is implicit, seemingly distinct from traditional collaborations between choreographers and visual artists.
Sparse set design and costumes—in Rite of Spring, nude suits that could be peeled open to reveal a circular red wound on the chest of the sacrificial Chosen One—complemented the techno-futurist concerns central to Mirror and this Rite of Spring; streamlined settings also reflected the efficient motion and graceful control exhibited by AWDC dancers. Yet, I wonder whether intricate fusions of more ornate set design with technological elements may be possible when dealing with historical ballets—celebrating frothy materiality or fantastical stage settings, augmented or transformed rather than overwritten by the aesthetics of high-tech innovation.
As an early confrontation with artificial intelligence in dance, Mirror / Rite of Spring offers an important opportunity to question the future, reflect on ourselves, and engage in a meta-consideration of how we continually reinterpret historical productions for contemporary circumstances—as always, though, there is more to be imagined.
