This week the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA) hosts Digital Tattoo, a multi-media dance piece created by KDE Dance. Handily located beside the library on Sussex campus, the ACCA is presenting one of its busiest seasons to date, packed full of innovative, thought-provoking and multi-disciplinary performances.
Choreographer Katie Dale-Everett (who gives her name to KDE Dance) describes the piece as exploring themes of “communication, privacy and the right to be forgotten.” Performed live by Jonathan Mewett and Sophia Sednova, the piece interrogates the electronic trail we leave behind us in everything we do online: our digital tattoo.
At its heart however, Digital Tattoo is a love story. By entwining that simple premise with the pressures and consequences of the modern digital age, KDE Dance aim to create something at once intimate and superbly important to our society. The significance of the digital is intercepted into the piece itself with the sophisticated use projected lights and film onto the performers’ bodies. “The idea behind the work is exactly that,” explains Katie Dale-Everett. “Our online self is something that will outlive us and what we post online becomes permanent.”
According to the ACCA, the average person spends two hours on social media every day. What could these marks we leave mean for our increasingly online and increasingly identity-absorbed world?
Digital Tattoo shows at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA) at 8pm on Tuesday 10 October. There will be a post show discussion with Cath James, Programme Director of funders East Dance.
Tickets: £10 standard/£8 students
Featured Image: Luke Lebihan