CHALLENGING CONSPIRACY WITH CONTEMPORARY DANCE
Award-winning choreographer Rosie Kay returned to the West Midlands with a second tour of her challenging and arresting performance MK Ultra. Birmingham-based Rosie, who most notably choreographed the Commonwealth Games handover ceremony from Australia to Birmingham, is tackling the divisive subject of today’s politics and the trend of younger generations preferring exciting conspiracy theories.
With a name like MK Ultra, it’s impossible to not think of the CIA mind control program in the 1950s. Performing at Midlands’ venues, Birmingham Hippodrome and Walsall Forest Arts Centre, the production has received outstanding reviews from The Observer and The Financial Times both rating it four stars. To get an insight into this thought-provoking performance, we spoke to Rosie Kay.
What made you think of the plot?
MK ULTRA was the third piece in a trilogy that explores how power is asserted over the body, with the first performance in the series being the widely-toured 5 Soldiers on how the body remains the frontline in war. In the second piece I looked at religion, and in MK ULTRA I used politics as my starting point. When I started researching, I wasn’t expecting to find myself in conspiracy theory but as I started talking with young people, I realised it wasn’t such a big step to make. Almost every conversation I had about control and authority led to speculations about a shadowy elite that pulled the strings behind the scenes. And when the magic words ‘Illuminati’ eventually cropped up, there was excitement and energy as they shared examples of symbols they’d spotted in music videos and which public figures were apparently under the influence.
It was the second tour of MK ULTRA, and I spent a lot of time in the studio with the dancers strengthening the plot. Now there’s a clearer narrative telling the rise and fall of the chosen pop queen who has been through the mind control programme and felt the full force of psychological experimentation. We have a new dancer for this part, Carina Howard (a graduate of Rambert School) and she’s an incredibly powerful performer!
What would did you want people to leave thinking?
For the re-working of MK ULTRA, I took a closer look at the competitiveness taking place between the women and how that fed into the eventual burnout and downfall of the MK ULTRA queen. I wanted people to feel more for what this ‘star’ experiences throughout the performance. She was subject to a lot of external forces but also the internal pressure we place on ourselves and desire to please others played into her manipulation.
There was also the conspiracy theory theme that was core to the show – MK ULTRA is purposefully hypnotic, intense and fast-paced. It’s constantly moving between fiction and reality to question whether it’s possible to tell the difference anymore. In some ways, it critiqued the age of misinformation as well as how powerlessness and this void of truth has created a hotbed for conspiracy theories.
The plot dealt with the younger generation preferring music and culture over the government, was that an instance of reality inspiring art?
I think dance needs to speak to people’s experiences. It needs to be socially relevant, connect with the audience and tap into emotion, so whenever I’m researching and developing a performance, I’m talking to people, asking what they think, observing how they act and behave in different situations. For MK ULTRA, it clearly became apparent that conspiracy theory was a constant presence in young people’s lives. It was something they chatted about amongst friends, speculating on versions of events, who was under the control of the Illuminati and who wasn’t. All of this considered, the fact that young people knew it was difficult to tell the difference between fact and fiction in politics and the mainstream media – long before Fake News hit the headlines – no one was taking a serious look at it. That’s what spurred me on to create MK ULTRA.
What’s next?
We’ve just become Associate Company at Birmingham Hippodrome so we’ll be returning next year, this time to the main stage, with an expanded version of our award-winning 5 Soldiers. It’s fantastic to see this work step up a gear and in May, we will be premiering 10 Soldiers with new themes to explore including diversity, LGBTQI+ and BAME identities within the military. Tickets are available, so get in there early!
Eleanor Forrest
