VOID

by V/DA and MHz

VOID reimagines JG Ballard’s cult novel Concrete Island through the lens of a black female protagonist - staged as a meshing of experimental dance and abstract glitch video landscapes. Blending typically Ballardian themes of liminal spaces and urban paranoia with contemporary theories from radical identity studies, Mele Broomes performs risk taking choreography to the backdrop of an industrial soundscape.

Winner of Total Theatre Award In Association with The Place, Edinburgh Fringe 2018.

PRESS

“Void replaces Ballard's white male protagonist with a black female one, and this shift brings the 40-year-old story right into the present day. Instead of a tragic figure trapped in the the amoral technological jungle of modernity, we see a desperate figure outside the system, trying to break in through the layers of privilege, patriarchy and institutional racism." ★★★★★ Broadway Baby
"Intelligent, thought-provoking dance reflects on what we have made of our world." ★★★★★ The Wee Review.
"Punchy, intimate dance... Broomes has taken Ballard’s modern-day Robinson Crusoe and replaced him with a black woman, whose desperate attempts to adjust to terrifying and alien circumstances are revealed as a metaphor for the immigrant experience." ★★★★ The Guardian/Sunday Observer
"Powerful multimedia dance-theatre disturbs the senses and the status quo...VOID is an inescapably powerful piece of work, both in its message and its sense-jangling form." ★★★★ Fest Magazine
“Dangerous, despairing experimental dance, where ragdoll weakness tries to find a riotous way up and out, towards resilience.” ★★★★ The List
“Broomes turns herself upside down, literally and figuratively, to articulate the emergence of new ways of being, grounded in authentic experience.” ★★★★ British Theatre Guide
"VOID assails you, unnerves you on many levels with Broomes at the heart of the risk-taking" ★★★★ The Herald

credits

Performance/Choreography: Mele Broomes | V/DA
Design/Performance Direction: Bex Anson and Dav Bernard | MHz
Character and Concept Consultants: Ashanti Harris and Adura Onashile
Dramaturg: Lou Cope
Producers: Feral (Jill Smith, Kathryn Boyle and Conner Milliken)

Supported by Made In Scotland, Creative Scotland, Tramway, Citymoves, Dance Base, Dance House Glasgow and The Work Room.