Postdigital Practice Research: Dance Plague with Flanker Origami

Abstract

Dance Plague with Flanker Origami by Organic Theatre is based on the digitally born characters of Flanker and Origami who are trapped in a world of digital performance. According to Phil Smith they are ‘an ontological performance of characters in the face of existential threat, attempting to exist in fiction, emerging from a crisis of liveness in the backwash of a global epidemic’. (Phil Smith 2023) • Performed by myself as Flanker and by John Dean as Origami, the characters originally appeared at the first hybrid edition of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2021, then toured festivals in Europe and Asia digitally, performing in hybrid modality in a pop-up shop in Edinburgh, and in the iterations of Dance Plague in the backstages of UK theatres and cultural organisations. • Structurally, Dance Plague with Flanker Origami is a relentless, ritualistic, dopamine-dressed promenade, reminiscent of European carnival processions, and of the Cornish Helston Dance. It is a social event but not ‘in the usual modern sense, more like the Obby Oss or the Mari Llwd, the social meaning or purpose of which have been forgotten – or were never relevant – and yet which retain a tremendous drive to be done.’ (Phil Smith 2024).