Conceived by multi-award winning Paris-based Spanish choreographer and film-maker Blanca Li, and hosted at The Barbican, this wonderfully innovative virtual reality event takes you inside a glamorous Parisian ballroom as a timeless love story unfolds around you in an extraordinary experience.
Music and dancing combine with cutting-edge VR and body-tracking technology to form the ethereal world we got to explore and enjoy. The storyline follows a heartwarming romantic tale across breath-taking locales, including a large ballroom and a lovely garden party, where participants interact with real-life performers and other guests. The performers are there to guide people both in real life and in the virtual world.
The virtuoso musical score by Tao Gutierrez takes you on a journey from classical waltz to a rip-roaring wild Cancan conclusion, with digital costume design by fashion brand Chanel. By simply putting on VR headsets and backpacks, we entered into a dream-like virtual world that was weird but coolly fascinating.
We were able to interact and roam in this ‘metaverse’ version of our world. It felt strange and mesmerising at the same time. The interaction was made possible by the use of avatars. Some dancers even gave a performance inside the virtual space. After the experience and towards the conclusion of the event, we went downstairs and had an actual dance lesson conducted by the dancers from the virtual world.
Interestingly, there were some Banksy murals outside The Barbican. It was a cool coincidence to see them. They were inspired by a past exhibition by artist Jean-Michael Basquiat at The Barbican.
All said, this was the perfect place for the virtual reality dance extravaganza to come alive. It was really incredible to see how far virtual reality has come in the past few years, and how immersive the experience was. The dancing was a really festive experience where one could easily forget that they were in a virtual world and just get carried away. I couldn’t have asked for a more enchanting experience.
