Surge

John Ingle

SURGE is an immersive descent into the fluid, ungraspable essence of water, where movement, sound, and digital landscapes merge in a visceral experience of power, memory, and consequence. It is a journey into forgetting and remembering, a confrontation with the force we have tried to control, only to be consumed by it in return. The performance unfolds like the tide – gradual, relentless, all-encompassing. Audiences step into a space where motion-captured performers move within a shifting world of water and light, their bodies dissolving into fluid, endless forms.

Two VR participants interact with the environment, gathering water that transfers onto the dancers, shaping the performance in real time. The wider audience stands at the edge, witnessing this transformation through monolithic LED screens. SURGE speaks of immersion – first tentative, then total. From ankles to knees, shoulders to chin, we are drawn into the vastness of what we cannot fully grasp.

Once, we understood water’s gods, its wrath and its mercy, its life-giving force. But we have slipped into forgetting, replacing reverence with control, damming, fishing, consuming – until even in our abundance, we remain empty. And yet, water still pulls us forward. SURGE is that pull – an urgent, poetic reckoning that demands we listen, feel, and surrender to the force that has carried us from the beginning and will outlast us all.

Project Collaborators:

Produced and Created by – Megaverse Original Composition by – Anna Meredith (Moshi Moshi Records) Poetry Written and Performed by – Vanessa Kisuule Live Performance by – The PappyShow Sound Design & Composition Adaptation by – Simon Hendry Production Delivery Partner – OmBeond Commissioner – Digital Catapult Commissioning Venue – Sage Gateshead