On SHIFT - A jump into the future

Cyborgs, technology, video effects, immortality, future. These are the words that I brainstormed after seeing SHIFT, a dance work by Emiliya Toncheva, on its last performance on the 13th of March, performed by herself, Anton Dimitrachkov and Ralitsa Neikova. Emiliya is a young actress, dancer and choreographer active in Sofia, whom I met during some contemporary dance classes and had the chance to know more - personally and professionally - during other dance-related events. SHIFT is her debut as a choreographer and I was eager to see it. In this article I will review this performance, whose presentation is: “SHIFT is fueled by the mystical unpredictability of technological progress and charts one possible scenario in which humans become cyborgs and tap into the gift and curse of immortality”. 

Three are the dancers involved, all in skin-tight suits of different colours and similar techno patterns. The female dancers seemed to represent almost-humans, as their broader movements and everyday-life gestures suggested, while the male dancer gave me the impression of being closer to a non-human being, due to the sharper and almost robotic motions he performed and his expressionless face. (Not being sure whether this interpretation is correct and for practical reasons, I will mainly use the expressions “female performers” and “male performer” to define these two groups along the review, without any intent to refer to their genders). While the almost-humans lie on the floor, he enters the stage and goes behind a curtain of hanging strips. On them, sci-fi landscapes and 3D body visualisations are projected, thus creating a digital scenography that, together with the techno-experimental music, transport the audience in a futuristic space-age world. The video projections on the strips are an essential part of the performance, as they complement and enhance the choreography. 

SHIFT. Photo by Yuliyan Rachkov 

An example of it is the pulsation of the arms of the male performer in a perpendicular position to the chest combined with the projection of a cross with a humanoid on it, a position that recurs also in other moments of the work. What’s the meaning of the cross? Does it stand for suffering, death and resurrection? I thought it could stand for the end of an old era, ours, and the beginning of a new life, run by artificial intelligence, which is indirectly referenced along the performance.

During the piece we see how the interaction between the “girls” and the “boy” develops: in the beginning the former act in unison and tend to him as if interested in taking something from him, remaining though well distinct from him, who stands out for being the most robotic and less flexible one. They perform some sequences all together, as when they repeatedly arch their backs, creating a curvy hypnotising wave session. With time, though, this situation changes: both the girls, one after another, take the lead behind the curtain, becoming the centre of the attention and leaving the other two performers moving aside, but finally they all get together. It felt as if they all took something from the others and managed to blend and become new and upgraded cyborgs in the end.

SHIFT. Photo by Yuliyan Rachkov 

Essential in the piece is the role of the audio recordings, which present excerpts of the book Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, and the songs, sung by Emilya and Ralitsa, Forever Young and Mad World. Their titles are already quite revealing and connected with the passages from the book, that deal with death - a matter of  “technical problems”-, immortality - the “upgrading of humans into gods”- and dataism - a stage in which a “homo-centric world” turns into a “data-centric world”, lead by algorithms. 

I think SHIFT is an interesting work that coherently combines different elements (choreography, soundscape, text, visual effects, makeup and costumes) which keeps the spectators engaged and makes them reflect - sometimes even through irony - about hot topics such as AI, the eternal longing for youth or the end of the human species. Some stylistic choices in the choreography seemed to me a bit extravagant and not extremely in line with the rest of the piece (like certain daily-life gestures or steps), or not extremely polished, but overall the performance convinced me and represents a good starting point for the development of an emergent choreographer.

Artworks by Regina Cassolo Bracchi and Giannina Censi at the Venice Biennale 2022 - Section Seduction of the cyborg

It inevitably made me think of the section Seduction of the Cyborg of the past Venice Biennale, which presented artworks by female artists considered cyborgs. As encyclopaedia Britannica states, “cyborg” is a “term blending the words cybernetic and organism, originally proposed in 1960 to describe a human being whose physiological functions are aided or enhanced by artificial means such as biochemical or electronic modifications to the body”. Both in the Biennale exposition and in Toncheva’s performance, the focus is not on the exterior prosthesis of these beings, but rather in a more subtle enhancement. In fact, in Donna Haraway’s vision, on which the exhibition was conceptualised, the term cyborg stands for an “avatar of hybrid identity that signals the beginning of a new, posthumanist, and postgender future”. This hybrid identity can take shape through the sculptures of Regina Cassolo Bracchi, the photos of Karla Grosch, the paintings of Kiki Kogelnik, or the dance performance of Emiliya Toncheva.