By: Lyndsey Winship | Fantasia: how to pack maximum pleasure into an hour of dancing | Neuroscience | The Guardian
Trailblazing choreographer Rosie Kay is using the latest research in neuroscience to bring unalloyed joy to her audience
When Rosie Kay was starting work on her new dance show, Fantasia, she couldn’t help but notice that every time she went to the theatre, or to see a piece of dance, or just switched on Netflix, everything she saw was dark and depressing. “I just feel there’s a cult of misery,” she says. “Everything’s so gloomy and miserable and everybody’s revelling in it.” It’s not that Kay thinks there’s nothing to be gloomy about in the world right now, “But it’s quite apathetic,” she says. “We go to these luxurious theatres and clap about the misery of the world, but don’t really do anything about it.”
Kay, a Birmingham-based choreographer best known for 5 Soldiers – her potent work about the realities of army life – is not one to follow the herd, and she found herself catapulting in the opposite direction. How could she make a dance piece that brought unalloyed joy to the audience? How could she pack the most amount of pleasure into an hour on stage?
Rosie Kay Dance Company: Fantasia is at Birmingham Hippodrome Patrick Studio, 25-26 September. Then touring.
