Eve Stainton (UK)

Eve Stainton’s unnerving choreographic performance explores societal suspicion and the construction of threat. As a solo figure moves amongst us, the Airedale Symphony Orchestra play a live soundtrack – the music from 80s horror film The Thing.

The Joystick and The Reins interrogates who decides who and what is a ‘threat’ within society, and how these ideas are reinforced through systems of oppression and authoritarianism.

Reproducing intense, hyper-emotional states, Stainton’s references include historical reenactments, police and riot arrest imagery, and 1980s Crime Watch episodes.

Complicating ideas of power and dominance, perpetrator and victim, threat and interpretation, the show asks: what it means to reconstruct a theatrical scene that draws on truth, and what societal constructs keep people at risk.

Part of Transform 25 international performance festival: transformfestival.org

Performances at Transform 25 co-presented by Transform and Slung Low’s The Warehouse in Holbeck.

Co-commissioned by Bold Tendencies, Dansehallerne, Transform, The Place and performance, possession + automation (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council). Supported by Queen Mary University of London, Old Diorama Arts Centre, Den Frie Udstilling, SLUG and L’Ecart Biennial.