Chain Reaction

Chain Reaction – a contemporary dance performance

Sometimes we come across those videos of elaborate contraptions where the camera follows, say, a marble knocking over a domino, which triggers another mechanism, lighting a candle, burning through a rope, causing something else to fall, and so on, until everything ends unexpectedly and cleverly. These setups are known as Rube Goldberg machines, defined as overly complex devices that perform simple tasks in absurdly complicated ways. In truth, that description often fits our own lives more than it does those amusing chain reaction videos.

Our daily routines are built out of them. The execution of even the simplest action is tied to a chain of small, seemingly insignificant steps—any of which can go wrong at any moment. Leaving the house, for any reason, includes finding the keys, waiting for the elevator, clearing snow off the car, hoping public transport arrives on time, or that the Spark car nearby has a working battery... We only notice the “gears” of the machine when they fail. The rest of the time—on the way to kindergarten or in line at the tax office—we move through the system like the marble in those videos: effortlessly and under pressure, all at once.

This is Chain Reaction—a performance where we are part of a complex machine carrying out simple tasks in an absurdly complicated way.

ATOM Theatre | CHAIN REACTION | TRAILER