Aerial Towers

Look at the location of the two dancers and the darkness between them.Where do you think they are?What does their body language and behaviour tell you about how they are each feeling?Why do you think lightbulbs are suspended in the space?What is odd about how the dancers travel?How would you describe the mood of the music?Something dramatic happens at the end of the scene. What is it?

This scene is abstract and surreal so you have to look carefully at what the choreographer has decided to include: a women and a girl, a sea of darkness, a migraine headache, a lightbulb obstacle course, and a death. You may not understand who the characters are now or why the sequence of movements are so bizarre and full of tension but both the characters and the events will become significant to the story.

The women occupy two tiny rooms in tower blocks on opposite sides of the street. They are close enough to see each other but too far away to communicate. The older of the two is pacing the floor and clutching at her head in confusion, or perhaps pain. The younger sees her distress and reacts by moving as close as she can and reaching out; but her efforts are futile.

Then, miraculously, they are floating free of the confines of their rooms, carried high up on the shoulders of two unlit men, through a sea of lightbulbs. This cannot be real; they move like automatons with wooden arm gestures (we have seen this arm gesture before); perhaps this is a nightmare caused by the intense headache. The older woman initially evades the younger but when contact is made, she welcomes the warmth and assistance and a succession of wary holds and lifts ensue where both are entirely dependent on the support of the other. Perhaps the message is that trust and openness are not easily or carelessly given and received in the city.

At the end of the scene, the girl is suddenly launched upwards – 10 feet into the roofspace. She hangs there for a moment, then drops like a dead weight and falls to the floor. A lightbulb drops rapidly to hover just above her body and a man runs to her. He carries her still body off stage. For now, this incident is out of the blue and inexplicable, but you will see this interaction happen again – same characters, same fall, same reaction – and understand its significance.

When you think of electricity, what words come to mind? Cables, wires, batteries, friction, plugs, sockets, lightbulbs? The earliest breakthrough experiments in electricity involved Galvani’s frogs and human cadavers but today (thanks to Volta) we are more likely to think of city lights, busy streets, shop windows, central heating, lightbulbs, machines and computers and not about our own fascinatingly complex brain and nervous system. This scene seems to pit the two types of electricity against each other: perhaps the way we live in cities is making us lose sight of the most important things in life: our own health and wellbeing, and each other.