“Three strangers enter a lift. Together, they embark on a journey.”
We’ve all seen that movie, right? Where Gwenyth Paltrow misses and also catches the train home from work, leading viewers down two equally likely twisting paths of Fate in Sliding Doors (1998).
Enter the Glitch Dance Collective, comprising of three dancers: Phoebe, Lorna and Mignon. All three are Chichester University MA graduates, where I had the pleasure of meeting them for the first time. Off the back of their Masters, the dancers went down a Choreographic route and started this collective, developing their own pieces as a trio. And thank God they did, because WOW.
The Brief they came up with was phenomenal – and filming it was no less of an adventure! - but you’ll have to strap in for this one because it’s pretty high concept... Are you with me? Alright, here we go...
Sliding Doors (1998):
"Tiny variations... never repeat and vastly affect the outcome. This is unpredictability."
— Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park)
The dancers were really drawing on this Sliding Doors idea (something that I just can’t find a better word for, despite all my Googling!) - this notion that you could or could not meet someone or do something, and then the two worlds or universes - stories - journeys that might accompany that decision go off in one direction and go off on another direction (honestly, Gwenyth made it seem so normal as a concept, but then again she had a haircut to help the audience to follow along). So, they knew they wanted to explore this whole premise of ‘What If’ and realised that a really fitting setting for this was... a lift (an elevator, for the American amongst you). And... honestly, it’s genius. Get ready, because I’m about to wax lyrical about WHY this is genius.
When you think about it... when you stop and really think about it... A lift is a really unique place. It’s both a ‘somewhere’ and a ‘something’. It’s a place where we pass other people all the time. And within a lift we will share a tiny, intimate space with people with no idea what that other person is experiencing. We have no idea what their lives entail. Most of the time, we won’t even talk to this other person or other people who share this space with us, am I right? We’re content to stand in silence. While this bubble holds us together and forces us to share space. Yet in a lift, we have a commonality. For those few seconds, we share the same intention, we share the same destiny, and we share the same relevance. If that lift stops or breaks down, we’re reduced to the same (in)significance.
A lift is a metal capsule – one that can maintain exclusivity (by shutting the doors and keeping others out), or one that epitomises the overlap section in a Venn diagram – where two worlds collide in the same space. An unwilling, unwitting inclusivity.
Symbolically... it’s bloody brilliant.
I’m going to have to explain how they chased this premise of ‘What If’ in just a moment but let me start by going into some of the practicalities of the Shoot and our discussions in pre-production.
Blue-Sky Thinking and the Matrix (1999):
I'd worked with the dancers before when they were in their MA year at the University of Chichester. I loved their choreography even then and they feel exciting and new to me. Much like I’ve said before in terms of working with outside-the-box Creatives, these guys bring a real breath of fresh air to the industry – to the Arts, to the Dance scene. The kind that will either leave you beaming or will give you goosebumps.
They do a lot of Dance on location and although the aim was to turn this into a performance that could happen on the stage, in pre-production we were talking about where this was set. The idea came that - instead of creating a lift that could be then put onto stage and be lit and be part of a theatre piece - how about we did this in an actual lift?! There was a marketing consideration here too; an idea that I thought was quite exciting was to advertise this in lifts, where people could scan QR codes and see a live performance of something that happened perhaps in that lift to advertise for their show. (Really, the world’s your lift – I mean, oyster).
All these different whacky, philosophical and meta ideas were flowing, and the fact that they're called Glitch felt like a nod to the Matrix - the word bringing up mental images and associations like ‘digital interference’. In the context of the piece, the ‘digital interference’ is explored metaphorically with one story meeting another, overlapping, sometimes combining and sometimes fraying apart. And I thought this idea of ‘glitching the matrix’ and playing with storylines felt very ‘binary’ - it either happened or it didn't, like a switch was either on or off. The dancers really wanted to get in the middle of that process and start having fun with the space between the black and the white.
In Dance terms, with this Sliding Doors ‘What If’, the performance could be a duet – where two lives collided - but it could just as easily be a solo if that person hadn't made that decision: if they had got in the lift or if they hadn’t. You'll see this played throughout the whole promo. And each character’s story (because the dancers embody characters) are pulled on, like threads, and they're played out in... the lift! Which I think was absolutely hilarious.
SO... obviously we needed to take over a lift.
Mission Impossible (1996):
We had to find something that people didn't mind being taken over for at least half a day to get all these scenarios played out.
It reminded me of a series called Trigger Happy TV (showing my age!) where people would press the button for a lift and as the doors opened there would be a different scene that unfolded in front of them, and I liked playing with that idea to come up with new scenarios. You don't know what's going to happen when those doors open - it could be one person, it could be full to the brim, but the lift looks exactly the same on the outside until the moment the doors opened. So, it was almost a cleansing of the palette that happened every time those lift doors closed - we're back to this ‘black and white’ notion of it's either full or it's not, or it's got someone or it doesn't. Think Schrödinger’s cat...
So we got in touch with Southeast Dance and they were kind enough to let us take over their lift for four or five hours one Sunday morning, starting at 7am with the promise that we'd start to wrap it up by about 11am as they had a matinee performance in the afternoon in their main space and this was their main/disabled access (Big shout-out and thank you to Southeast Dance for trusting the process with us on this one!).
Next, we obviously had several pre-production meetings, going over ideas and swapping inspirations - either things we had picked up through YouTube or Pinterest or even artwork that we liked and were inspired by. And the most important thing for us as part of the Brief was that it also had to be showcased on a phone. We made the executive decision to shoot this in portrait as lift doors lend themselves to this orientation: everything was long and tall and thin; people in it were squished together like sardines in a can. Not only that but, practically, it was the most likely device that people would be watching the footage on, presumably through social media platforms. Plus, a phone is something that everyone would have on them, and so scanning a QR code in the lift for more information was suddenly an easy strategy to consider.
The Perfect Storm (2000):
I loved that I got to wade in on the creative decisions on this one, and the whole thing was this kind of perfect storm of creative madness! The Behind The Scenes inside scoop is that we all must have looked absolutely insane on this Shoot! Like I said, the dancers were all playing characters, so they were acting just as much as they were dancing, and you’ll notice from the video that we had a whole party scene, complete with streamers and bunting, and then there was a whole date scene with a dinner – wine and place settings - and furniture shoved into that poor lift too!
(The premise was that this character was on a cringy date and something that obviously didn’t come across because we didn’t use the audio from the original shots was that this dancer was just monologuing about the craziest stuff! She was adopting this low, confident voice and coming out with stuff about the wine and how shiraz is her favourite and did her date believe in true love. Even the other dancers had to call her out on how bizarre she was being!)
Messing around and getting to play with creating the scenes and the shots was honestly such a laugh. Perhaps it’s not professional to have to take a minute to stop laughing, but I was just so glad I got to sit in a front row seat to see these performers create something from scratch in front of me! We were also trying to set up little Instagram videos and promo as we were shooting – documenting our days, as we Creatives tend to do to show you all a bit of Behind The Scenes/a glamorous ‘day in the life’! - and so we had this kind of play within a play going on (Sliding Doors AND Inception ?!).
Inspector Gadget (1999):
Technically, this Shoot was bitty – and in a good way; there was plenty to get my head around and sink my teeth into! The challenge was that we had to try and make the lift doors independent from the space, and then the space and the dancers independent from each other. Everything in this shoot was actually modular and separate. From a technical point of view, this is actually quite an interesting Shoot because everything was green screened in layers. We had green screen behind the doors, and then we had green screen behind the performers doing the movements, and then we also had a green screen from inside the lift looking out, so you could be behind the dancers or you could be looking through the dancers, and we could replace that background as well. We also doubled up and redid the duets as independent solos for each person as well. So everything was able to be manipulated. People were able to be added and removed very, very quickly in post-production, and it only added to the ability to make the dancers ‘glitch’ and shutter in and out – black and white, binary, either ‘there’ or ‘not there’.
Another little bit of tech trickery that I really enjoyed was the ‘CCTV’ footage within the lift. People have remarked that they thought this was genuine CCTV footage, but it was actually the use of an action camera. I felt really chuffed (and a little smug) that people couldn’t tell the difference. There’s a kind of kudos there, and it felt like a nod to a successful sleight of hand. Super satisfying.
Ghost (1990):
One tiny detail that I notice that viewers may not notice are the handprints that suddenly appear at about 0:53s on the back wall of the lift. I’d love to say that was deliberate, but... that's actually because of the order we shot things! It was only in post-production that I realised that those handprints had arrived. And then they disappear again. But I decided not to take it out, because it actually kind of does exactly what the piece is doing as a whole?! It’s like another layer of an unspoken story – another potential thread in the tapestry. I like the idea of these ghostly handprints being residual and only being included for a short time. Isn’t that basically the whole point of what we all do when we’re travelling in lifts? We come in, and fill the space with our own drama and our own lives, fleetingly, and then we leave – the lift spits us out again – and then someone else gets in, and the lift becomes their blank canvas. Each of our energies are all so temporary and yet could all be said to ‘reside’ in the lift still. The ghostly handprints just visually go some of the way to symbolise that. (See? High concept, y’all).
The Big Short (2015):
I was absolutely bowled over with the finished result, and the company absolutely loved it. The piece really ended up leading us in terms of a lot of the creative decisions, including the decision to use the piece of music that we did instead of an Operatic score that is actually featured in the Dance performance, and for that reason it really took on a life of its own. I think we showcased something that was truly unique and truly a breath of fresh air in the current Contemporary Dance climate. I was thrilled with how much we were able to pack into the day to try out so many different ideas and loved how flexible people were with trying out new concepts.
Phoebe, Lorna and Mignon have always been incredibly inspiring new choreographers and coming up with ideas as a trio and as a group is something that should be rewarded in today's climate. I think so many people try to go-it-alone, or become part of a Rep company, and there's a real originality to what they're doing and how they're trying to approach becoming artists.
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006):
This is the kind of work I love, and the kind of people who inspire me time and time again: Artists who push the envelope; people who are trying new and unique things and interesting new ways of shooting it - not only from a choreographic point of view but from a marketing point of view as well. I think En Route from Glitch has real opportunity to access an audience for Dance who don't usually get to see or want to see Dance. I think this showcases that Dance can be everywhere and it's inside anyone given the right circumstance (even inside a lift...!).
As for what I hope you take away from this... it’s to keep an open mind. To help people realise that you can interact with Dance and Art wherever you are, and I guarantee that there are artists and dancers and choreographers who are creating art in a space that you didn't think was possible (or in a way that you didn’t think was possible).
As well as enjoying all my movie references, I also really, really hope viewers and readers go on to check out Glitch Dance Collective because they are real up-and-comers and are absolutely awesome. To Phoebe, Lorna and Mignon – I wish you three all the very best for the future and I look forward to our next project together!
See more in my Dance & Movement Portfolio