MADGOD 2.001 based on Stanley Kubrick´s film “2001 - A Space Odyssey”, uses the character in the film HAL- the onboard computer- as a metaphor to depict ironically the dangers of computer technology taking over the control of our lives.

Six dancers perform an abstract reenactment of the crew from Stanley Kubrick’s film: 2001: A Space Odyssey. The narrative of the work follows the endangerment of the human crew by the onboard computer HAL that gradually takes over the control of the spacecraft. In addition, textual content from fictional and academic sources that informed the realisation of this piece appear on stage, either as a voice in off track or text projections.

MADGOD 2.001 is the first dance work of the Ventura Dance Company created entirely with the exclusive use of computer programs. The dance sequences were generated using the software program Life Forms 3.5, manipulating the dance sequences generated through various transforming processes. The computer was therefore used as a tool to create complex movement patterns otherwise impossible to achieve without the aid of a dance software. In so doing, the choreographer did not use his own body to create dance movements but instead, he used the software's virtual avatar, in order to avoid the dancers ingrown habits, tricks and vices, whilst at the same time attaining a new movement style.

The stage design consists of video projections (some of which were transformed by the beat and melodies of the electronic music) to form a virtual cube whereby the walls, the dance floor and the dancers bodies are used as screens onto which images are projected. The video images consists of footage material of film fragments, animated graphics and typography to create a world of rhythms onstage by means of projected images.

With ‘Madgod 2.001’ we wanted to answer the question whether it is possible to create an entire dance work with the sole means of computer programs and in so doing reflecting on the leading role of artificial intelligence in our lives.

It rains with letters, suns explode and shooting stars fall.. a multimedia magic world, a confusion of the senses that locks us visually.. but the real intoxication comes from Pablo Ventura’s live choreography on the stage and not from what is to be seen on the screens…

The computer heroine Lara Croft would pale from envy when she could recognise how superior, beings of flesh and blood still are… The dancers in “MADGOD 2.001” dance themselves through a virtual firework and seem at times as if they were directed from afar. That they are superb is thanks to the articulated and hinged robot-dance but such elegance, subtlety and warmth, puts any synthetic /artificial beings in the shadows…

Contrary to Cunningham and Forsythe whose choreographies are mostly purely formal experiments, Pablo Ventura has not totally relinquished content. “MADGOD 2.001” not only researches the interplay between technology and human bodies, but he flirts with Stanley Kubrick’s “2001- A Space Odyssey”. With the weightlessness, buzzing speed and psychedelic colour visions experienced by Kubric’s Astronauts, but also with the sinister on board computer Hal to whom the crew is completely and utterly delivered.
Agathe Blaser / Tages Anzeiger