Wired Aerial Theatre on the Stade

Little did I think that the show put on in Hastings tonight would be my introduction to bungee-assisted dance.  Imagine five people dangling from wires on the face of a large screen on which images are projected, and you get an idea of the Wired Aerial Theatre's production of "As the World Tipped".  A crowd of a thousand or so of us stood in the gloom and slight drizzle on the open space of the Stade, by the seafront, as the show began, with some deafening music and a speeded-up simulation of the 2005 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, with voiceovers of delegates and five people onstage whizzing about with files.  When the talks collapsed, the fun started, with the stage first tilting then upending completely, before being raised in the air by a giant crane.  Clever effects followed, with the dancers/acrobats interacting with footage from Yann Arthus-Bertrand's film Home about climate change, and from Gideon Mendel's films about floods in Pakistan and Australia.  As continents fell apart, the actors fell with them; they ran vertically through a grassy meadow and fell off the sides of buildings that were themselves constructs of endless television screens with newscasters broadcasting climate change news.

Do you get a whiff of propaganda?  well yes, this was a work with a message - underscored at the end with the words "Demand Change" projected in capitals on the screen.  My problem with it as a work of art was that the message was over-explicit and over-simple.  Women in saris and small children standing in mud and staring soulfully at the camera have become a cliché for the West's indifference to the problems of underdeveloped countries.  A little more showing and a little less telling would have made a big difference.

As would a slight reduction in the volume of the sound.  With admirable political correctness, a screen had been placed at one side with text for the hard of hearing.  This displayed not only words that were spoken but also the nature of accompanying sound effects - "winds howl", "woman screams".  However, the noise level was such that anyone deaf would probably have got much of the point from the vibrations in the ground beneath our feet.  When the message came up with "Soft piano music" as we were being deafened by some less than tinkling ivories I thought they could do with replacing the sound engineer.

But if you looked at the show just as a spectacle there were some superb moments.  I particularly liked the sequence where a dancer posed in the centre of the screen as Lena Horne singing Stormy Weather.  The running up the screen was also good.  It was a fine way to celebrate the start of the Coastal Currents Festival, about which more later.

Antony Mair