Jack McGee
MODERN GOD is immediate. It’s urgent and overwhelming. Bloody. Its concerns are with the now; the intersections between social media, capitalism, and us. The world seen from down in the weeds. Hindsight, and the perspective it affords, are years away, but choreographer Jeremy Beck seems unconcerned with this. Who needs to see the forest when the trees are on fire?
It’s hard to talk about the phone thing. Our world is changing. It has been for decades, yet we’re still in the thick of it. Social media and the internet are thoroughly integrated into contemporary life, but the specifics change fast, and our art is racing to catch up. Works that attempt direct commentary on the phone thing frequently fall into pitfalls of feeling condescending, surface level, or overly didactic. At worst, they feel equivalent to a terrible meme you’d (ironically) see on Facebook. Even more thematically ambitious projects, like Hone Kouka’s Ngā Rorirori, find themselves struggling to stick the landing. Which, honestly, is fair enough.
It’s a brutal ask, trying to find nuance in something we don’t fully understand yet. It’s far more difficult to be prophetic than reflective. On top of this, the phone thing is prickly because it’s shockingly intimate. We all have our internet vices, be they make up tutorials, TikTok dances, or, purely hypothetically, an endless barrage of YouTube video essays about Pokémon. It’s embarrassing. I, like many, find it uncomfortable to reflect on. Because of all this, I will admit that my expectations for MODERN GOD were tempered. The poster, depicting its dancers strapped in and staring at their phones, is a clear statement of intent.
Skipping to the end, my arms ultimately end up uncrossed. Footnote gets away with it. More or less.
In the centre of the stage, elevated about the performers, is a giant phone shaped projection screen. The dancers take turns throughout the show filming footage that is projected above them in real time. The specifics of this vary. Sometimes they take advantage of a green screen behind them to make reels, talking to the audience about subjects ranging from personal gossip, to architecture, to planes. Other times, they bring the camera into the choreo, using it to capture dance, both beautiful and violent.
MODERN GOD aims high. It uses this divide, between screen and stage, to highlight the dissonance between our online and real world selves. “The difference to the online self” Beck writes in the program, “is that we have a filter to this interaction. We can present a polished, performative, version of ourselves.” Midway through the show, a large group fight takes place. One of the dancers runs through the centre of it, ducking and weaving through the throes of violence with their phone camera out. The result, projected, looks like a music video. It’s raw adrenaline. Midway through, my eyes drift down the stage, eager to see the conflict from a new perspective, and all the elaborate, physical shapes I’m so enamoured with are instantly obscured. It looks like a mess. The patterns are visible on camera, and not to the naked eye. Here, the show proves its point with surprising subtlety. It’s anything but condescending.
It’s also worth noting that MODERN GOD has more elaborate a thesis than many of the works that find themselves wrestling with the phone thing. The show is arguably more concerned with how corporations profit off our internet dependence, than the thorniness of the dependence itself. It mostly sidesteps the victim blaming of these phone bad narratives, slowly directing our attention towards the real villains. It’s not subtle in this. By the end of the show, money has literally fallen from the ceiling, but it’s well executed, so what’s the harm in being direct?
Impressively, all six members of its talented ensemble embody unique influencers, and have surprisingly large chunks of dialogue. They’re all distinct, well characterised, and aptly performed. Highlights include Veronica Chengen Lyu, who thrives as a decidedly vapid “story time” diva, and Levi Siaosi, whose word play obsessed toy-fluencer is precisely idiosyncratic enough to feel real.
I’m slightly hung up on the show’s depiction of these characters. There are sections of broad satire where it feels like cultural criticism autopilot. These people are easy targets, and a lot of the shots taken, while funny and well observed, stray dangerously close to the one-note, kids-these-days, landmines that the piece otherwise avoids. By the end of the show, we’ve mostly moved beyond this, but I think the needle could do with a slight nudge away from Ruben Östlund. If the show wasn’t so good at communicating its ideas through dance and projection (designed by AV team RDYSTDY), it’s more on the nose comedic tendencies would bother me less. They’re not poorly done. They’re simply missing the depth evident in the rest of the piece.
In the program, Beck writes that “Dance isn’t the easiest medium to convey a complicated theme.” This might be what saves the show. Every individual section feels lived in. Some dances are lethargic, others are icily romantic. They all feel current, observed of the world around us. It’s because of these that MODERN GOD is a show I’d love to watch again. Not for its big moments of satire or religious bombast, however striking, but for these spaces around the edges. It’s there that it feels like Beck, his performers, and us the audience, have the room to try and figure the phone thing out.
It’s a brutal ask, trying to find nuance in something we don’t fully understand yet. It’s far more difficult to be prophetic than reflective. On top of this, the phone thing is prickly because it’s shockingly intimate. We all have our internet vices, be they make up tutorials, TikTok dances, or, purely hypothetically, an endless barrage of YouTube video essays about Pokémon. It’s embarrassing. I, like many, find it uncomfortable to reflect on. Because of all this, I will admit that my expectations for MODERN GOD were tempered. The poster, depicting its dancers strapped in and staring at their phones, is a clear statement of intent.
Skipping to the end, my arms ultimately end up uncrossed. Footnote gets away with it. More or less.
In the centre of the stage, elevated about the performers, is a giant phone shaped projection screen. The dancers take turns throughout the show filming footage that is projected above them in real time. The specifics of this vary. Sometimes they take advantage of a green screen behind them to make reels, talking to the audience about subjects ranging from personal gossip, to architecture, to planes. Other times, they bring the camera into the choreo, using it to capture dance, both beautiful and violent.
MODERN GOD aims high. It uses this divide, between screen and stage, to highlight the dissonance between our online and real world selves. “The difference to the online self” Beck writes in the program, “is that we have a filter to this interaction. We can present a polished, performative, version of ourselves.” Midway through the show, a large group fight takes place. One of the dancers runs through the centre of it, ducking and weaving through the throes of violence with their phone camera out. The result, projected, looks like a music video. It’s raw adrenaline. Midway through, my eyes drift down the stage, eager to see the conflict from a new perspective, and all the elaborate, physical shapes I’m so enamoured with are instantly obscured. It looks like a mess. The patterns are visible on camera, and not to the naked eye. Here, the show proves its point with surprising subtlety. It’s anything but condescending.
It’s also worth noting that MODERN GOD has more elaborate a thesis than many of the works that find themselves wrestling with the phone thing. The show is arguably more concerned with how corporations profit off our internet dependence, than the thorniness of the dependence itself. It mostly sidesteps the victim blaming of these phone bad narratives, slowly directing our attention towards the real villains. It’s not subtle in this. By the end of the show, money has literally fallen from the ceiling, but it’s well executed, so what’s the harm in being direct?
Impressively, all six members of its talented ensemble embody unique influencers, and have surprisingly large chunks of dialogue. They’re all distinct, well characterised, and aptly performed. Highlights include Veronica Chengen Lyu, who thrives as a decidedly vapid “story time” diva, and Levi Siaosi, whose word play obsessed toy-fluencer is precisely idiosyncratic enough to feel real.
I’m slightly hung up on the show’s depiction of these characters. There are sections of broad satire where it feels like cultural criticism autopilot. These people are easy targets, and a lot of the shots taken, while funny and well observed, stray dangerously close to the one-note, kids-these-days, landmines that the piece otherwise avoids. By the end of the show, we’ve mostly moved beyond this, but I think the needle could do with a slight nudge away from Ruben Östlund. If the show wasn’t so good at communicating its ideas through dance and projection (designed by AV team RDYSTDY), it’s more on the nose comedic tendencies would bother me less. They’re not poorly done. They’re simply missing the depth evident in the rest of the piece.
In the program, Beck writes that “Dance isn’t the easiest medium to convey a complicated theme.” This might be what saves the show. Every individual section feels lived in. Some dances are lethargic, others are icily romantic. They all feel current, observed of the world around us. It’s because of these that MODERN GOD is a show I’d love to watch again. Not for its big moments of satire or religious bombast, however striking, but for these spaces around the edges. It’s there that it feels like Beck, his performers, and us the audience, have the room to try and figure the phone thing out.
Pictured: Veronica Chengen Lyu