The first thing that struck me about the performance was the bare humming and throbbing of the music in the beginning.It almost reminded me of ambient electronic bands like Boards of Canada, but it was much more simple and organic than that. The soundtrack did the most work in expressing the emptiness and vastness of space, but the silent motions of the dancers did as well. It was easy for me to imagine the performers as a pair of first time astronauts fumbling about in zero gravity, hearing only the gentle rhythms of the void, seeing only by the dim light of a distant Sun.
Maybe it’s just because I have never seen modern dance before, but the rest of the performance felt like experiencing a mental breakdown. Screaming and yelling, kicking beach balls around (were the four big balls supposed the represent the four gas giants in our solar system?) and making almost animalistic noises were an interesting way of portraying how Earth politics seems so petty and primitive in the comparison to the cosmos. The way in which the performers represented people putting aside their differences seemed to be rocky, with chases and guns, but ultimately successful. While I’m not exactly interested in watching more modern dance, I think that this performance effectively communicated the overview effect in a somewhat non-verbal way.
