Age of Content

With more and more realistic avatars and smoother photographic filters, the boundaries between real-life and virtual bodies are blurring. (LA)HORDE turns this grey area into a new territory for critical exploration. Lost in a mysterious world which borrows as much from bunkers as it does from industrial warehouses and cliff scenery, we all come face-to-face with other potential versions of ourselves. At the heart of this monumental stage design, a melancholic testament to the states-of-mind and body of those who inhabit it, there is a fight scene worthy of the best action films.  Using this flaw in the machine as a starting point (LA)HORDE pursues the entanglement of our virtual and real lives through this new creation for the National Ballet of Marseille. Because, in this age of content, and over-abundance, the boundaries are more porous than they appear.

Drawing on the internet’s aesthetic facets of distraction, accumulation and collage, and moving from the strange familiarity of a GTA character to a Tik Tok dance mash-up, the group uses choreographic art as a tool to give critical distance. And highlights, more than ever, the power of the stage as a space where boundaries can be pushed and spells can be broken.

Photo: © Gaëlle Astier-Perret