Hidden Fields is a contemporary dance performance based on the danceroom Spectroscopy (dS) intallation. It has grown pretty much alongside dS, with the first, half hour version growing out of a dance workshop I ran with the system at the Arnolfini in Bristol in April 2012. This initial version, with choreography by Laura Kriefman, premiered at the Arnolfini in Bristol’s Harbourside festival in Summer 2012. Following the critical success of that initial foray, a substantial Arts Council grant facilitated the development of a full evening performance for five dancers, choreographed by Lisa May Thomas.
This toured the UK over 2012 and 2013, and in 2013 also travelled to ZKM in Karlsruhe and Stanford University and San Francisco’s Z Space in the US (the video shown here was of a performance at Bath Spa’s Seeing Sound in November 2016). The piece has attracted a number of awards, including the Royal Television Society’s Digital Innovation award and several UK Media Innovation awards. It is leading on to new experiments combining dance performance with multi-user VR, which are bearing fruit in subsequent projects.
