Laceship

Laceship is an immersive installation and performance for an intimate audience, created by BalletLab Artistic Director Phillip Adams with choreographers and artists William McBride and Walter Dundervill (New York). This project grew out of a larger experimental work The Prelude that fragmented into 4 part multi-disciplinary performances and films.

Laceship is inspired by horror cult classic film The Exorcist (1973). The three performers inhabit characters from the film through a queer lens exploring themes of religious unorthodoxy, embodied exorcisms, Catholic ceremony and demonic ritual. References consider the film’s iconic bedroom scenes in which Regan–the daughter played by actor Linda Blair–receives exorcism by two catholic priests while her mother Chris McNeil played by Ellen Burstyn screams in horror.

As if on a film set, the audience takes position amongst the interior of a large-scale floor to ceiling scenography of lace curtains surrounding the entirety of the performance environment. The costuming and installation design are a visual subversion of the film's 1970s décor and interiors. a faux Georgian-style house, a medical facility and the bedroom in which the infamous scenes of exorcism take place.

Laceship shifts the performance site to visual transformation of film, design and art. The production invites the audience to become part of an experiment that bridges the gap between movement, cinema and stage. Laceship channels the taboos of forgotten dance rituals.