“Unlocked” comes to Fabrica at Brighton Fringe Festival on 25th and 26th May

Nova Grace Productions presents Unlocked, a contemporary dance performance by 4 professional dancers exploring life in and out of lockdown. It is the development of a unique project beginning in the dancers’ bedrooms during lockdown 2020 and continuing to virtual performances and now to stage. It reflects on the whole “Covid-19” experience and aims to help people talk about what lockdown was for them.

From bedroom to stage. Since the very beginning of Lockdown in March 2020, the professional dancers of Nova Grace Productions took to Zoom lead by Maidstone choreographer Karen Hill, to push the spatial limits of their homes and explore life in lockdown through contemporary dance. They were apart but yet together and were kept going by the purpose of this shared project – dance was their coping mechanism.

Climbing through windows, jumping on beds, rolling in duvets, taking brooms as partners and leaning on chairs, walls, wardrobes, even ceilings! They explored the possibilities of every room in the house (except the bathroom!), giving working from home a new meaning, until they could meet again outside and at a 2m distance.

Since then, the project has become a channel for healing. No-one was left untouched by Covid. So many loved ones lost, so many families separated, so much of society was broken – it was an experience of general upheaval which has left so many people broken and traumatised. We’re asking people to reach out to those they spent lockdown with or supported and brought shopping for, left on the doorstep, rang the bell and took two paces back. Love that neighbour and use the opportunity to talk to them about how they are finding life since lockdown.

This moving in-person reflection of the pandemic documents the strange times we lived through, taking the audience on a journey back through times of scary news headlines, questions over vaccines, wearing masks, confusing social distance rules.

The performance gives us a chance to stop and think about the enormity of what we’ve lived through.

“Unlocked” comes to Fabrica at Brighton Fringe Festival on 25th and 26th May.

Details below :

Event title: Unlocked