Choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh is marking the centenary of WWI with Contagion, a 40-minute promenade dance work for war, art and science-related sites and her first major new work since 2015.
Co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the First World War centenary, the piece, which explores viral contagion and war as pandemic, opens at the Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed, a former army barracks where soldiers were sent to keep fit during the First World War, on 15 and 16 September 2018.
In 1918, a Spanish flu pandemic infected one third of the world’s population and killed over 50 million people—more than the war itself. Jeyasingh’s choreography will "echo the scientific features of a virus" as "eight female dancers contort, strategise and mutate as they explore the resilience as well as the vulnerability of the human body".
Throughout the creative process, Jeyasingh has been advised by Professor John Oxford, Emeritus Professor of Virology at the University of London, whose work on the 1918 Spanish flu is world-renowned.
Running alongside the tour of Contagion is Spanish Flu Now (working title), a web project created by Flying Object which imagines the social and cultural impact of Spanish Flu happening today. A series of Instagram short stories—each based in historical fact but retold using selfies, memes, journals, conspiracy theories, journals, subcultures, trends and hashtags—will chart the experiences of different individuals.