Dance company nocturn are determined to bring contemporary dance to new audiences. That’s why they’re moving their performances away from the traditional stage and towards digital platforms such as Facebook.
Having already worked with nocturn on Dare You Watch?, I was called in again to help plan and write The Revelation of Miss White. It was a digital R&D project funded by the Arts Council of England, but it turned out to be a polished piece of entertainment in its own right.
The story followed Miss Jessica White, a terribly proper English lady whose dreams began to appear on Facebook as videos on her profile page. That’s where the contemporary dance came in.
While the dancing was performed by the magnificent Harriet Waghorn, I played the role of Miss White in text: I posted in-character Facebook updates each day and responded to messages and comments as her for three and a half weeks. Over that time, her prim facade began to crack until her followers finally discovered the traumatic cause of her fractured personality.
But the real strength of the project was the video work. This was largely down to Harriet, creative director/choreographer John Darvell, and cinematographer/editor Ben Johnston. It was all elegantly disturbing.
John and I talked about the project and our research findings on the StoryForward podcast, and The Literary Platform wrote a piece about the project too.
David Varela 