Future Self

How often has someone asked you how would you see your future self? Art Group Random International and Company Wayne McGregor see it as part of First Sense, Wayne McGregor’s inaugural programme as Director of the 2021 Venice Biennale Danza, honouring many the diversity and vitality of many outstanding artistic voices who communicate their truths via the incredible instrument of the human form. Curious to know more? Then keep reading Future Self.

Recalling our July theme, Dance can be described as a three dimensional way to display various emotions. At .Cent, we believe that through this art form we show diversity in action. Whatever your ethnicity, gender and age might be, Dance is transversal to anybody who wants to declare their passion to it. And these dance companies will show you exactly that.

Random International and Company Wayne McGregor are presenting Future Self as part of First Sense, which is Wayne McGregor’s debut program as Director of the Venice Biennale Danza (2021 – 2024), during the 15th International Festival of Contemporary Dance (23 July – 1 August 2021).

In his first year as festival director, Wayne McGregor reveals the complexity, breadth, and ‘transformability’ of a profession that lives on renewal and fosters the development of contemporary art through conversation with the most cutting-edge thought.

Throughout the Programme, McGregor reflects diversity through gender, race, and age while highlighting the commitment of several established artists working on the periphery, who may be currently invisible to a broader public: A 10-day event with over 100 artists, all Italian premieres, two world premieres, and three European debuts.

Embodied Action is one of the locations where the 15th Festival of Contemporary Dance and the 17th Exhibition of Architecture: ‘How Will We Live Together?’ converge, including three installations works: Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jan Fabre’s Not Once, Wilkie Branson’s Tom, and Random International/Company Wayne McGregor’s Future Self.

Future Self is a dynamic light installation that examines human mobility and identity and the relationship between self-image and others. An accurate representation of the transmutation of a two-dimensional journey into three-dimensional art.

Random International’s exhibit is a three-dimensional living sculpture that shows visitors their full-length body image, three-dimensionally dispersed as tiny dots of light. Capturing, reproducing, and mapping light motions, the sculpture reacts to individuals around it with a slight delay in representation, providing an experience with the instantaneous and otherworldly self-image.

Accompanied by an arrangement through musician Max Richter, Wayne McGregor choreographs two dancers as they explore the installation, interacting with one another and their own reflections through light and the body.

Richter’s creative work spans solo albums, ballets, concert hall performances, film and television series, video art installations, and theatre pieces, using anything from synthesizers and computers to a full symphony orchestra.

At the moment, selected individuals of the audience are also joined together as an illuminated presence that is believed to be another version of themselves. Throughout the performance, music, art, and the human body are fused into a single, instantaneous, and emotional experience.

Where can dance take you? An excellent question, isn’t it? The National Youth Dance Online Festival (U.Dance) is taking a two-dimensional movement into a three-dimensional dance showcase, allowing participants to pick and mix sessions in their favourite styles.

The event, which will take place online between the 16th and 18th of July, will feature 30 sessions of digital dance workshops, industry information panels, and dance performances. The event is free for all participants and available to dancers aged 11 to 19, or up to 25 with a disability, intending to give even more young dance lovers access to inspirational, inclusive material following a year of uncertainty and cancelled dance lessons and performances.

Strictly Come Dancing’s Karen Hauer and former champion Joanne Clifton, star choreographer Sir Matthew Bourne, West End leading lady Miriam Teak-Lee and Royal Ballet star Marcelino Sambe are confirmed in the line-up for U.Dance National Festival 2021.

One Dance UK collaborates with partners to deliver and support U.Dance events around the UK. They support organizations that produce dance pieces in a variety of genres, such as hip hop/street dance forms, jazz and theatre styles, ballet, South Asian dance, contemporary dance, African Diaspora dance, folk dance, you name it: U.Dance is for everyone!

Since its start, the initiative has reached approximately 200 000 young people but shifted to an online version in 2020 and 2021, striking thousands of young dancers and dance enthusiasts from throughout the UK.

Each summer, the U.Dance National Festival is held in a different host city. The festival honours the UK’s most impressive youth dance companies and groups selected to attend the festival via the regional platforms for an uplifting weekend of dance.

Dance has an influential role in showing us the beauty of movement. It shows us that no matter who we are or how we look, there is a way to express our most imaginative thoughts or ideas into three-dimensional bodily art.

As Albert Einstein put it best: “We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”

For more information on the U.Dance National Festival email comms@onedanceuk.org or click here.

For more details on the 2021 Venice Biennale click here.

If you enjoyed reading Future Self, then why not read 3D Scribbles.