Future Rites is a 35-minute collective and immersive multi-user virtual reality experience that invites audiences to play an active role in Igor Stravinsky’s masterpiece, The Rite of Spring.

Using AI to enable new forms of participation and physical immersion, this richly embodied experience invites audiences to inhabit a world overflowing with nature’s spectacular rhythms and motions. Journeying together through stunning environments and vast, flowing pattern, the community of participants are joined by a cast of beguiling characters in choreographed interactions where they encounter moments of choice, responsibility, transformation and sacrifice. The visitor is invited to witness transformational cycles of birth and death, where life renews itself in an eternal dance.

Through these ritual acts, the boundaries of the self are brought into question, revealing the deep interconnecting relationships binding us to others, and to the natural world of which we are a part. Will our choices as a community reflect our willingness to make sacrifices for the benefit of the future?

Future Rites reimagines both content and form, breathing new life into a seminal masterpiece for the digital era. It astonishes with a distinctively embodied user experience, evolving virtual landscapes and surreal characters, crafting an immersive musical realm like no other. In terms of form, its pioneering technology sets a ground- breaking standard for XR interaction.

Marceline is a creation that pays tribute to the performing arts. With movement, live music and technology applied to the stage, it offers a journey through the life of Marceline Orbés, a catalogue of historical clown numbers and an aesthetic reflection on modern society and specifically at the beginning of the last century.

The production is performed by a dancer, a soprano singer and a string quartet, with the potential to expand into a full orchestra.

For this new production, we work again with the most incredible and underrepresented audience: babies, toddlers and their families. The audience sits on stage and adults, babies and children are invited to actively participate in the show.

seven.eyes is a large-scale, immersive walk-in-installation, a fluid, robotic sculpture synthesising elements of robotics, light, music, sound and water. Equipped with various AI-controlled light sources, a sound-system plays music specifically composed by the young artist Grand River in dialogue with real time-generated sounds. Seven massive industrial robots carry a partially mirrored LED screen. Their presence commands attention, captivating viewers with striking imagery. But the human individual is the true centre of the sculpture. The scenographic elements—movements, light, music, sound, water and machines—interact with the audience. The performance can be extended to a full-evening show with live performances by the composer and a dance ensemble.

Imagine stepping into an illustrated selection of the world’s most famous fairytales, each tale a magical and hope-inspiring world where fears are confronted and inner voices silenced. A Concise Compendium of Wonder explores humanity’s shifting relationship with nature in three stories across a 2,000-year span.

By examining this theme across two millennia, A Concise Compendium of Wonder illuminates what humans have gained and lost by moving from living in the forest to a rural setting, then to an urban jungle from which we now gaze into space and consider relocating to the planets beyond. This new work considers the environment in both form and content. Using Slingsby’s internationally renowned theatre techniques of shadow, light-play, live music and miniatures, this work is epic in intricacy rather than scale. This original performance responds to the current climate crisis while being a multi-faceted, precious jewel that inspires hope for the future.

Three productions are performed in an enclosed, designed world holding seeds of all three stories: the forest, the village and the future city. The performance space is a portable wooden structure that can be erected in a town hall, warehouse, studio or on a proscenium stage. Nearly 120 participants of all ages are invited into this wooden cabin and into the world of each story through a range of participatory, immersive experiences. Audiences may attend just one production, see all three across a season or step into an epic experience of three shows performed back-to-back in a set that evolves and continually reveals new surprises. The design world changes across the productions as we traverse 2,000 years.

Kaori is a girl trained in the ceramics trade, guided by her grandfather Yamato in rural Japan. One day, some mysterious gold dust appears and transforms into different figures.

Only she and her bird-brother Kui can see them. To the rhythm of the seasons, the siblings begin an adventure. Thanks to their grandfather’s teaching about ceramics and the ancient art of Kintsugi, they manage to uncover the mystery of the gold dust. 

Sang and Jun spend carefree days by their playground—the river. One day, an unexpected event takes Sang on a magical encounter with the majestic giant Kali. Meandering across the land, they discover who Kali is, and remember what he once was.

Stream of Memory manifests the Papermoon Puppet Theatre’s abiding interests in nature and the bonds humans have with each other. Inspired by communities that make the river their homes, the work celebrates nature and the life-giving energy of human relationships. It also reflects the impact of urbanisation and modern life on natural environments while urging for the rekindling of our bonds with nature and each other.

Telling the tale of remembrance and reconnection through puppetry, dance and visual media, Stream of Memory is performed by six puppeteers from the Papermoon Puppet Theatre and four dancers from Singapore. Leading the artistic team are Maria Tri Sulistyani and Iwan Effendi, Co-Artistic Directors of Papermoon, with creative talents from Indonesia and Singapore including Yennu Ariendra (Composition & Sound Design), Gilang Kusuma (Multimedia Design), Retno Intiani (Costume Design), Dapheny Chen (Choreography) and James Tan (Lighting Design).

Pahkinen recreates her Monolit Polygon, a craftily constructed work with a large number of dancers, to achieve a visual effect of fun (im)possibilities. Pahkinen is inspired by the graphic designer M.C. Escher’s mathematically organic illusions, crystallographic reflections and figures of eternal cords in unlimited spaces. Escher’s graphics are like a puzzle; the visual fugues of bodies slip into each other, filling each others’ void.

In Monolit Polygon the choreographer plays with the laws of perspective and turns what is known upside down, back and forth. There is tension between order and chaos, freedom and captivity. Thrilling solos rise from the breath waves of the ballet corps. The dancers whirl like Môbius bands, pausing in enigmatic polygon formations. Pahkinen works closely with composer Jonas Sjöblom whose electronic soundscapes with monolithic density offer a contrast to Chopin’s brilliant etudes.

Monolit Polygon is a versatile and surprising work with visual puzzles, black fountains, crystallographic mirrors and weird insects.