“What is it about?” is a question often asked of contemporary dance shows – both before and after seeing them. Sometimes the answer is “nothing”, or “whatever you want it to be”. Sometimes the choreographer has a concrete idea, as in Alexander Whitley’s Overflow, which tackles the dominance of digital technology, big data and the information overload of modern life.
Or at least, if you look very closely it does. Whitley’s thematic ideas are sometimes as under the radar as a social media megacorp quietly sucking up your personal details. What’s dominant here is a hypnotic light installation by the Dutch artists Children of the Light, an LED strip that continually transforms, from glowing amber lightsaber to flaming javelin to shooting stars. It rotates above the stage, distracting our attention from the humans below, who frequently fade into the darkness and thick haze. It could be a proxy for all the screens, the flashing lights that keep us clicking and scrolling, dazzled by tech, losing sight of what’s real.
Not that Whitley’s dance isn’t worth looking at. His style has evolved since his early pieces in the Wayne McGregor mould and turned into something more organic, with some of the ranginess of gaga dance but also a real attention to the attack of each step. The cast of six seem very good dancers but you can’t always discern that much detail.
Like the underlit stage, and the soundtrack by electronic producer Rival Consoles, Whitley’s view of this digital life seems unrelentingly bleak. There are scenes of connection, the dancers all joined together in a flexing, curling chain, but more often there is isolation, desolation, alienation. There’s little in the way of dynamics or theatrical arc, but there are some excellent effects: a dancer cutting a wide sheet of light with his limbs; a striking image where red beams cross the stage and the light sculpture moves slowly over a knot of naked dancers on the floor, as if scanning their bodies, harvesting data, identities, perhaps their humanity, too.
Overflow does not provide the optimism we could all do with right now, but the intense 70 minutes throws up some transfixing moments.
