THE RITE OF SPRING / MIRROR
Sadler’s Wells East
★★★★
“a thrilling fusion of disciplines”
The world premiere of Alexander Whitley’s ‘The Rite of Spring / Mirror’ is fierce, confronting and visually arresting. Using real-time generative AI and motion capture technology, this double bill stunningly interrogates AI’s accelerating influence and our ability to keep up.
We open with ‘Mirror’, inspired by Shannon Vallor’s book “The AI Mirror”, illuminating the distortions AI throws back at us. Charting the shifting relationship between two humans and an increasingly intelligent machine, it’s a vivid study of how AI stands to reshape the world around us.
Whitley’s collaboration with creative technologist, Luca Biada, seamlessly fuses dance and technology, creating a series of sharp, unsettling observations. Whitley’s choreography is exhilarating, opening with the full force and beauty of unenhanced humanity. But AI suddenly intrudes – without warning, the dancers are tracked in real time before ghostly avatars emerge from the darkness. With dramaturgy by Sasha Milavic Davies and technical direction from Dom Martin, the interplay between dance and technology expertly reveals the power shift from human to machine, and before long a far darker, more distorted world emerges.
Dancers Gabriel Ciulli and Daisy Dancer deliver the sequences with thrilling precision, holding the audience rapt with their control, power and impossibly clean lines. They also draw out the emotional undercurrent with real clarity, shifting effortlessly between trepidation, playfulness and fear. Set to a gripping abstract score by Galya Bisengalieva – sometimes expansive, sometimes frenetic – the work melds music and movement into an utterly cohesive whole.
Mirella Weingarten’s set design is relatively simple, with a ring of seven poles hosting the all-seeing infrared cameras, providing a striking frame for Biada’s generative AI spectacle. Weingarten’s inverted monochrome unitards, speckled with motion capture dots, cut cleanly against the AI visual riot. Joshie Harriette’s lighting design, with associate Sarah Danielle Martin, extends the visual tension, shifting from stark geometric patterns to swirling galactic chaos. The sound design packs a punch, increasing the tension with some aggressively loud sections.
And then comes ‘The Rite of Spring’, an expansive, cinematic reimagining of Stravinsky’s avant garde ballet. Whitley’s interpretation trades ancient pagan gods for all powerful AI, re-examining human sacrifice through a contemporary lens and pressing us to question how much has really changed.
Whitley and Biada once again fuse technology and dance, using motion capture to turn five performers into a mesmeric, shape shifting multitude. Circles dominate the choreography and AI imagery, generating a hypnotic wormhole of endless cycles. The climactic scene erupts in an epic, incendiary self-sacrifice, though visual spectacle perhaps eclipses choreographic craft in places. This time, technology reads more as translation than interrogation, making me wonder if the two works might land more impactfully in the opposite order.
Ciulli and Dancer are joined by Nafisah Baba, Natnael Dawit and Elaini Lalousis, who channel a fierce, primal energy, moving as though seized by the very force driving the piece. Stravinsky’s iconic score blazes in all its discordant glory. Oppressive, driving, and primal, it keeps the whole piece on edge.
Weingarten’s ring of cameras sprouts ropes, sprawling like a giant neurone before ensnaring their next victim. The earthier costumes contain ominous hints, such as bloodstains tracing the dancers’ spines. Harriette and Martin’s lighting becomes increasingly infernal, further charged with searching red spots lights.
‘The Rite of Spring / Mirror’ is a thrilling fusion of disciplines, raising urgent existential questions for a society on the brink of AI revolution. Though ‘Mirror’ feels more resonant, both works are stunning blends of dance and AI that will quite literally never be the same twice. Catch them while you can!
THE RITE OF SPRING / MIRROR
Sadler’s Wells East
Reviewed on 18th March 2026
by Hannah Bothelton
Photography by Oskein
