Dance of the Dead

Meena Chowdhury

“But I hear the music I feel the beat And for a moment when I’m dancing, I am free” -Free, Florence and the Machine. Outer space is completely dark, weightless, and infinite. A place where oblivion goes on forever. Yet there is depth in that darkness, dark energy roams around expanding the universe. The same happens when you close your eyes. It is not completely black, there is always different colours that dance around. That blackness that one sees in the back of their eyelids is the last thing seen before death. It teleports you to the place where you become one with the dark energy in outer space, helping to expand the universe. Afterlife stations, a place between life and death. This afterlife station is a dance club. One final dance until you are brought into the darkness. I was interested in sensations and time, and the lack thereof in space. The typology that ties these two ideas together are dance clubs. In dance clubs, 4 hours of dancing can feel like 4 minutes and suddenly time feels like it slows down when a different sensation comes in like a touch or a smell. The way that space deals with time is through the space-time fabric. When there is a black hole it stretches this fabric slowing down time. The club is designed through this same concept. The ceiling is made of fabric, which pulls and stretches depending on the program. If the program is smaller and more intimate, the fabric is pulled more, whereas in bigger more public programs less fabric is pulled. Once you die, the York theatre becomes a dance club. The first half is the prepping area. The individual follows a path that involves having a pre-drink to finding the right outfit. Once ready, the theatre turns into a dance club. The club is organized by BPM (beats per minute). At the back of the club, it is at a low BPM. The closer to the stage, the higher the BPM becomes. This is to allow the individual to match the dark energy in space. Finally, when entering the stage, there is no more fabric pulling or stretching, just the dark, black sky. The moment they look up to see the absence of the fabric is the moment they join the black energy. The last thing they see is the blackness.