28 MAY 2022 - Underside

🥱🧑😷🥸🥳🎩

What do these emoji mean?

What is your expectation for the show?

None really, I had seen Josiah promote it on a SnapChat story, I assumed it was some kind of dance.

How did the show as a whole make you feel?

Thoughtful.

What did you think it was about?

My impression was of the night-life of wild animals, more than that, of the fay or dark elves performing ritual dances and ceremonies or revels. It felt like someone picked up a rock, the creatures froze in time, we took our seats, then they resumed their dance while we watched. Then they froze again and we left, and behind us they started again.

The underground setting, lights, and music all enforced this idea, the crocked line of lights overhead gave the impression that the room was curved above us and we were looking down towards the end of the room.

We were seated close and close together, so we had to keep moving to look past the heads in-front, again enforcing the idea of an event not meant for us, but that we were just seeing part of.

It felt like the kind of scene that only phased into our world during a certain phase of the moon.

What did the space look like?

I think it was one of the coolest performance spaces I’ve event been in (though I have been in the carpark before, and toured it to see the earthquake renovations).

We were guided down the stairs in small groups and lead from the entrance in the middle of the room to one end, then a taped cordon was lifted and we were lead down the space between where two rows of carparks meet with the stopper bumps on each side to the other end of the room where the audience was seated.

The dancers were frozen in bizarre positions and facial expressions on alternating sides interwoven with streamers, strange costumes and bits of junk with stage lights pointed at the audience from behind us and patterns of fluorescent lights on the low ceiling.

I really wished they’d turned off the standard carpark lighting for at least once scene, could have looked cool.

Did you fall asleep?

No

Any notable mentions?

I appreciated Josiah’s efforts with the disco-space-worm movement.

What was the audience like?

Sold-out, and focused on anything and everything they could see. Parts of the dance went around and behind us.