British dance company Protein has been touring in the Middle East with ‘LOL (Lots of Love)’, a work about relationships in the age of social media. Director Luca Silvestrini kept a diary. Read more (PDF)
Award-winning Protein Dance have just toured their highly engaging show LOL (lots of love) , about love and relationships in the digital age, to venues across the Middle East and North Africa. Back in London and preparing for performances of LOL at The Place this weekend artistic director Luca Silvestrini gives us a quick update [...]
In a mad dash from person to person, the cast of Luca Silvestrini’s Protein (formerly Protein Dance) tackle love, loneliness and life online in LOL (Lots of Love). Racing through space to the buzzing, bleeping, chiming and clicking of Andy Pink’s techno-inspired score, six dancers whiz, dive and flit between one another as if physically [...]
Protein’s LOL at The Place If you are interested in checking out some ground breaking contemporary dance then you need to get down to The Place located just around the corner from Euston Station. The Place’s aim for their upcoming season ,Spring Loaded , is to “bring together the freshest talents in contemporary dance”. Well [...]
6 February 2011 “Has anyone got a Samsung charger?” asks Kip Johnson plaintively, turning to the audience in LOL (Lots of Love). As its title suggests, Luca Silvestrini’s new work for Protein Dance is concerned with the mirage of human connection in a digital age. We see the six cast members frantically networking, their endeavours [...]
31 January 2011 Luca Silvestrini is the sharpest of comic choreographers; his satires on the shallowness and obsessions of the modern world were wickedly honed in works such as Big Sale and Dear Body. In LOL (Lots of Love), he takes on love and the social networks. And what makes this his best creation to [...]
2 February 2011 ‘savvy, highly entertaining dance-theatre’ ‘There is a lot of text, beautifully detailed and sharply satirical and matched by peppy, rhythmic movement that ranges from headlong ensemble rushes to more intimate convolutions. Most of the choreography is underpined by emotion, so that even if someone gets manipulated or mauled, it’s done with a [...]
16 February 2011 In what is Protein’s sharpest and funniest work thus far, six members of the Facebook generation search for friendship and love. What follows is social networking animated with tremendous physical and verbal wit, and interspersed with downright sadness. LOL traditionally stands for ‘lots of love’ but many more meanings are suggested in [...]
Look, it’s us, Photoshopped. The lights come up on disparate photographs,projected onto a backdrop,close-up to the point of almost blurring. Using wires as a prop to illustrate our reliance on social networking and our seeming inability to function without it,a a man drags a woman, quite willingly, almost submissively, onto the floor in a kind [...]
This show about love, dating, connecting online and in person, provides a welcome antidote to other work on offer in Edinburgh this year that tries to show love as something for members of an exclusive club, a self-selecting elite composed of those proving themselves cool, or even hot, enough to be allowed in. ‘Love is [...]
DANCE & PHYSICAL THEATRE, LOL (LOTS OF LOVE), ZOO SOUTHSIDE (Venue 82) ****HUMAN relationships were complicated enough before we had the internet; now though, with chatrooms, Facebook, online dating sites and cybersex thrown into the mix, we’ve entered a brand new stage in our history – an era of ultra-fast ultra-connectivity which has created opportunity [...]
16 March 2011 I was forced to eat my words with a double dollop of protein after proclaiming rashly over a pre-show drink that I never revisit an “opening night” review on the back of a subsequent performance. “Never say never” has never been so apt, since while the first performance was gratifying, many of [...]
28 February 2011 Using our obsession with everything online as the primary theme for Luca Silvestrini’s LOL was pure genius. This hour and fifteen minute physical theatre performance uses abstract dance movements and intertwined stories to express our lives on the information highway. Protein Dance company mesmerised the audience in Leicester’s Curve theatre studio last [...]
16 February 2011 Cyber friends: real or unreal? Better or worse than the real thing? That’s what Protein Dance tackle in a funny, apt way in ‘LOL (Lots of Love)’. For the text and Tweet generation LOL stands for Laugh Out Loud – which is what this company makes you do. Beginning with a montage [...]
Dance is a fantastic way to convey the experience of social networking, says computer scientist Harold Thimbleby Interview by Laura Barnett 13 February 2011 The Guardian This dance piece is all about sexual relationships, and whether or not they can work when mediated by the web. One boy and girl seem to be getting on [...]
6 February 2011 By rights, this interview should be taking place in a chat room, not face to face. Choreographer Luca Silvestrini has spent a year of his life networking online, investigating how the internet is transforming human relationships. Has it changed him? ‘I got hooked on Chatroulette,’ he confesses. ‘It swallows hours of your [...]
“Human connection on virtual speed, exhilarating and funny …. his best creation to date” Judith Mackrell, The Guardian ****
“sings with melancholy tension, LOL is Silvestrini’s strongest work to date” Luke Jennings, The Observer
“savvy, highly entertaining dance-theatre … it has a potent, even poignant charm” Donald Hutera, The Times ****
