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Here’s another Danny Boyle-directed opening ceremony, almost as epic as his London Olympics one in 2012. Factory International invited him to co-create a show that would announce the new £242mn Aviva Studios in Manchester as a major cultural landmark. That they have achieved with Free Your Mind, a spectacular dance adaptation of The Matrix — a source movie that allows them to go big on dazzling, even if they go small on meaning.
The use of dance leaps ingeniously out of a central idea of the 1999 sci-fi film, its source code, where the movement of bodies — swerving, slanting, shifting — distinguishes individuals as sentient or synthetic. A twitch or contortion can suggest the blurring and blending of the two.
It also strikingly communicates an anonymising of people in a crowd, as in the film’s scene of the hero Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, wading through a bustling street. Kenrick Sandy’s choreography connects this depiction of the mass brilliantly to the film’s other metaphor of “virus”, “plague” and “cancer”. Twitching, jerking dancers are balled together into mutating cells.
Each revolution of the ensemble’s pistoning arms appears as though they’re charging batteries or cranking motors, though Sandy’s slow, flowing whirls look too loose and less effective when he’s alone as the resistance leader Morpheus. Mikey Ureta overplays the robotic movement of the villainous agent Mr Smith with a stiff torso that freezes half his body. The choreography also lacks direction and purpose on the second half’s long thrust stage, bundling on and off either side.
But Es Devlin’s design creates a gladiatorial stadium for a brilliant final battle in which Corey Owens’ Neo and Nicey Belgrave’s Trinity gambol through martial arts kicks and jabs in reflective black jackets like roiling dark waves. The synthetics’ bodies thud to the floor as if their batteries have stopped, and bullets are shown by lines of code that charge across Luke Halls’ video screens.
Other images from the film are stunningly recreated. The ensemble writhe in gossamer sacs on long umbilical cords. The scorching of the sky sees a trapeze artist yo-yo through smoke against an orange disc that flames like a supernova while confetti flurries down like pixels or cascading code.
There’s little of this arresting impact when the story moves into our present. Commentary consists only of platitudes about people being glued to screens, even if there’s something unsettling about the performers being led by phones made to resemble eyes, their faces narcotised. A catwalk that simply parades “big tech” brands and social media icons feels too on-the-nose and schematic.
The pursuit of spectacle also pushes everything into the macroscopic, without smaller moments and subtlety. The relationships particularly suffer, and the storytelling splutters like a machine. It’s a series of isolated sequences with no transition or sense of setting, while many routines don’t so much develop and progress as drag and repeat. This begins as a sharp parallel with dancers following steps the way a computer runs commands, but wears away as they increasingly look as if they’re on autopilot.
It’s an adaptation without an idea — or a white rabbit to follow. It misses the modern resonances, referencing neither our fever-pitch paranoia around AI, nor the politicisation of blue/red pill where “freeing your mind” has been co-opted as an alt-right protest. It might not make you question your reality, but for all its glitches, you’d have to be a machine for it not to blow your mind.
★★★☆☆
To November 5, factoryinternational.org
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