Inspired by JG Ballard’s The Drowned World and set in a Perspex maze created by Beyoncé’s stage designer, this dystopian dance-theatre show is truly unique
. More than three years in the making, the 80-minute cross-genre site-specific world premiere is perhaps the most ambitious – and expensive – work ever produced by the festival. Driven by internationally renowned British artists Maxine Doyle and Es Devlin, Salamander’s concept, scale and scope are breathtakingly next-level.
The reclaimed industrial portside Northshore at Hamilton is an apt entry point to a dystopian future. Inside the historic Associated Minerals Consolidated Limited warehouse we confront a world under glass. Our first view is over a luminous house-sized maze of cubicles, passages and platforms, strikingly reflected against a black expanse. You can remain there; alternatively, walking down to watch from the lower thrust vantage allows you to confirm that this is actually water.
‘The salamander’s bright yellow swimsuit is the first of costume designer Bruce McKinven’s bold colour statements.’Collective artists, emerging from the floor. Their movements, alongside narration, reveal they are trapped in a world made uninhabitable by rising temperatures, humidity and sea levels. Contemplating this future prophesised in 1962 by JG Ballard’s novel The Drowned World, some humans venture outside and begin metamorphosing into amphibians.
The end of the first part is marked by a final send-off featuring celebratory red attire and wine, eventually flooded by a blood red wash of light . After choosing where to stand in the first half, we are ushered to seats to watch the second, a “last supper” on a circular platform.
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