The Centre Culturel Kinneksbond in Mamer is putting on an English-language dance production of "The Smartphone Project" on Friday 21 October 2016 at 20:00, with a French-language version of Saturday 22 October,
“Please, switch ON your cell phones!” With this request, "The Smartphone Project" overrides a common rule of theatre: the audience is invited to download an app and to actively communicate with the performers during the show. Together with actress Florence Minder, former Pina Bausch dancers Fabien Prioville and Pascal Merighi have developed this amusing, yet deeply profound interactive dance performance that explores the possibilities of modern technology and widens our theatrical experience. Both an object of social criticism and an aesthetic trigger, the smartphone vibrates on stage, alongside two gorgeous dancers.
A piece about movements, mannerisms and myths. Although dance frequently explores these subjects, rarely are they given the treatment they receive in The Smartphone Project, which examines how they are mutating under the frequencies of our mobile devices. Ever since phones first became attached to people rather than network jacks – in other words, since landlines have turned mobile – they have become vehicles of images and data. People use them to read, to see, to “augment reality”, to record and even, by way of a trend more than a technology, to work on their own subjectivity (via the selfie). More than just transporting gigaoctets, they also convey customs and social practices. Quite naturally, without indoctrination, Fabien Prioville offers the audience a physical, group experiment of these underground anthropological processes. The audience are equipped with the appropriate app (designed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology), before taking part in a subtly written and staged interactive adventure. As they adjust their perspective between screen and reality - something we are well used to doing already - depending on the instructions they receive, they sometimes end up all together and sometimes isolated from the images and opportunities. Huge partitions appear (iOS vs. Android), former fighters (the Blackberry) are honoured, and newsworthy events are examined. Fabien Prioville and Pascal Merighi also physically take part in the game, which constantly questions perspective, relationships and incommunicability. It is not too far removed from the motives so dear to Pina Bausch, for whom they both danced. The audience are guided on their entertaining and analytical journey by the mischievous but attentive presenter Florence Minder, who makes sure everybody is on board. The three actors switch between distance and emotion, making virtuoso use of their bodies.
The careful dosage, which avoids falling into the trap of naivety on the one hand, and cynicism and lecturing on the other, documents the perils of the smartphone, which has now become an almost universally shared prosthesis.
Tickets cost €22 (reduced €11) from www.kinneksbond.lu or www.luxembourgticket.lu
The Smartphone Project from Kinneksbond on Vimeo.
