Blue Elephant Theatre – 21st November
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
Ella&co explore our relationship with social media in a fast-paced and very funny dance piece that entertains, educates and enlightens audiences of all ages.
The company, Eva Escrich, Ella Fleetwood, Julia Jordan and Amy Morvell all grew up alongside social media and gamin, but for those of us who remember mobile phones the size of a house brick, a handy Millennial dictionary is included to help with more arcane seeming sketches.
With sound designer Adrien Hollocou’s music from familiar games and channels, the piece is performed as if on a screen, with the dancers moving between sketches as if they have been swiped, and twitchy jumps when the notification alert sounds. Ella Fleetwood’s inspired choreography sees the company posing and preening, with the obligatory pouts of celebrities and influencers, through beauty and fitness routines and tiny dog walking. Inane commentaries about outfits and ridiculous tips for achieving a better life are interspersed between the dances. Scarily, some of these are taken from actual channels. There are nods to The Sims, Tinder and many more that may have passed an old Facebooker like me by.
The influence that social media has on young people is laid bare, alongside the shallow interactions online that can be mistaken for a real connection. The disconnect between real life and your online interactions is portrayed beautifully in a scene that begins with a girl posting about the death of her grandmother and her feelings of loss. As online friends awkwardly “like” the post and don’t follow up, one person actually engages, and the dancers manage to imbue the moment when they reach through the screen and engage physically and emotionally with a wonderful sense of love and compassion. A glorious moment of humanity amongst the artificial world we can sometimes get lost in. The need for posts to be liked, and the possible damage to self-esteem and mental health when they are not is also touched on in a quietly upsetting sketch that we never see the end of, for, like every sketch in the show, it gets interrupted by a swipe and a notification alert that is all too familiar to anyone watching a teenager on their device. Are our attention spans really that short? Can’t we wait for something to run to its conclusion before seeing what’s new?
The teacher in me sees the amazing potential for #nofilter as a brilliant stimulus for discussion and reflection on social media, relationships and mental health in schools. #nofilter is a fantastically entertaining piece, performed brilliantly, that makes you laugh, squirm and think in equal measure.