Can you match the Bolshoi Ballet's moves? Photograph: Tristram Kenton.
From tomorrow, Trafalgar Square's pigeons will encounter some more unusual birds on their stomping ground, as Swan Lake is adapted for the streets. But put all thoughts of tin foil-clad Covent Garden performers aside: this time, it's over to you.
Courtesy of Trafalgar locals the ICA, a collaboration between technology fixated choreographer Tom Sapsford and digital media art collective KMA will transform this central London tourist trap. When aspiring ballet dancers cross the paving stone stage, a heat sensor will trigger a beam of light, illuminating their figure, and the show begins. The shadow of each participant's form will reveal an ethereal projection of other ghost dancers pirouetting around them. But this visual remains invisible to innocent bystanders, and the artwork can only be experienced through participation. "Unless you're in it, you can't see it," Kit Monkman of KMA has explained. The result will be an interpretation of the ballet's White Act, in which the Prince discovers the swan Princesses.
Anyone is invited to make up the corps de ballet and you can invent the routine as you go along. In an Emperor's New Clothes (well, it will be for the audience) meets Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake style, perhaps it would be apt to perform naked, although anything, including swan dresses and tutus, will suit this show.
Taking over where the mobile clubbers and flash mobbers left off, this looks like the latest attempt to challenge conceptions of public space. Participants will seemingly dance to nothing but some quietly piped Tchaikovsky, no doubt under a light evening drizzle. Them London folk are strange, the tourists might think - but as the pigeons magically morph into swans, it should all make sense.
If you're too shy to step up, then keep an eye on the square's webcam. But if you do take part, do share your photos or stories with us.
