Finding Light & Empathy in CoDa's 'Beyond the Darkness'
- Janejira Matthews
- Jul 14
- 3 min read
Imagine your body disintegrating into a million particles. Or lifting an arm, only to find it’s still at your side. Imagine the floor shifting away from you without warning. These are the experiences transmitted into digital form under the direction of Nikki Watson, artistic director of CoDa dance company. Far from imaginary, however, these occurrences are very real for the people who have lived them.
CoDa’s most recent installation, Beyond the Darkness, presented at the University of Roehampton on the 5th June is a curious insight into what it is like to move with a neurological condition. More specifically, it reaches into the exact moment that life presents a neurological switch. Months of research with Lived Experience Consultants (LECs), people living with neurological disorders who share their stories with CoDa, culminate in a dance film, As the Floor Shifts, and an interactive digital mat, (The Moment) Everything Changed.
A combination of animation and film, As the Floor Shifts is weighted with insight into personal relationships between people and their bodies. The words ‘I just want to hold on to my body’ emphasise the fragility of our physical being and its importance in our everyday lives so easily taken for granted. Particles gather and disperse to hint at body parts that aren’t quite solid; perhaps a spinal cord or a rough silhouette of someone moving. Nothing looks tangible, and it is this odd sense of another reality that encourages contemplation of, ‘what would it be like if it happened to me?’
(The Moment) Everything Changed sets out to answer such a question. The technology creates an interactive space where participants stand on a mat, a Kinect Azure camera picking up their movements that are then manipulated on a TV screen. I raise my arm and am met with an odd delay; my arm is lifted, I can feel it, but seeing a short lag on screen feels unsettling. My body empathises with it, a physical acknowledgement that it is me I can see. Like the experiences of neurological conditions, the screen is unpredictable. One moment feels stable, the next image breaks up into brightly coloured particles. The shot might zoom out and spin, the effect hitting me with a surreal outer body experience as I vaguely recognise myself amidst the feeling of physical displacement. Delays, fragmentation, disorientation as the floor slips away – these have all been lived by the LECs who have shaped Beyond the Darkness. Yet, this is just a glimpse into the lives of people with neurological conditions. I know that my body will never fully appreciate the full impact of sudden, uncontrollable shifts without having a neurological condition myself - but even a glimpse is enough to start building embodied empathy.
Watson and her team have been an instigating force in bringing these narratives to a visible space, whereas these lives are often at the edge of common awareness. Despite technology being something external to the installation viewer, it aids in embodying sensation as we watch ourselves in (The Moment) Everything Changed. Unusual, kind in its approach and fearless, Beyond the Darkness wields compassionate power to make the world a more understanding place.
