Hive City

What happens to the moon in the film projection?

What in the film tells you where – and when – the scene has shifted?

The cityscape intermittently disappears and is replaced by what images?

The music was slow and haunting during Frank; What is it like now?

What are the dancers wearing?

What types of movement can you see?

How do the dancers react to the jostling and falls?

What kinds of interactions are going on?

During the headstands, what are the dancers doing with their feet?

What three incidents connect the film to the live action?

The scene contains some complicated and quite abstract ideas but it helps to think about every element separately – the film, sound, lighting and movement.

The quiet stillness of the moon gives way to a speeding tunnel of space rocks and debris and Frankenstein’s monster is transported to a dark alien environment that rapidly lights up, window by window, to reveal a twenty-first century city crowded with towering blocks of bedsits. It is night but thousands of lights are switched on across the city. The contrast with the 18^th century Frankenstein era could not be more striking and the difference (as suggested by the rapid searing bolts of light being fired through pipes and wires in the film) is the advent of electricity. The world has speeded up and is unrecognisable.

The dancers wear coats and jackets suggesting they are outdoors in the street. Initially, following the eerie loneliness of the previous scene, there is a sense of relief – a reassurance that there is safety in numbers. Movement is simple but fast moving: running, walking, criss-crossing in circles and straight lines. Dancers exchange glances and skim swiftly past each other, until someone is inevitably jolted. This starts to happen more frequently and some fall to the ground. They start to watch each other intently; square up to one another; some confrontational, others try to diffuse tension. Everyone seems to be in their own world and too busy to take time to connect or befriend, so things are getting nasty and the dancers look warily about them to see who will be the next to be shoved or thrown.

Then suddenly the world inverts: everyone is standing on their heads with their feet moving, as though walking, and attention is drawn to three cameo scenes in which live action responds to the film: Naomi checks the dials on a washing machine; Martina irritably bats away petals blown by a fan from a vase of flowers; and, after several attempts, Chris, late for work, manages to catch a flying slice of toast that pings out from his toaster: the wonders of electricity! Life is fast-moving. No time to stop, reflect, connect.

Finally Al (Frank) is left alone on stage, reminding us of the previous scene and leaving us with the notion that dangerous people lurk in city crowds. He pulls a cord to plunge the stage floor into darkness, isolating just two tiny upper rooms on opposite sides of the space. They are starkly lit by bare lightbulbs.