PRISM mixes music, lights and thematic projections to deliver not just a performance, but an experience.
This year, Sale Waterside Arts is offering a family-friendly winter festival to kick off its festive period. PRISM is a community-led three-day event comprising a light projection trail complimented by Sentinel – a work conceived and performed by Richard Evans.
The light trail itself consists of ever-changing coloured bauble projections, which have all been created from ideas submitted by the local community; in one case, one of the designs is by a very clever two-year-old. Dotted along School Road, these installations will be projected nightly until the end of the year as part of Sale’s Christmas lights and are already proving a big hit with toddlers and adults alike.
Across the festival, there will also be a performance of PRISM by Manchester-based Richard Evans. This piece mixes music, lights and thematic projections to create a work which is not just a performance but an experience.
Sentinel has been performed across the UK and even in the USA and was last in the North West at Manchester Science Festival, and you can see why it is in such demand. The audience is taken on a journey literally through space and time – very apt given Dr Who’s anniversary this year. The first track, Made of Stars, sets the tone for the performance with a mixture of early synthesiser work by artists such as Thomas Dolby, John Fox, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, creating, at times, an otherworldly presence.
For 20 minutes in total, we are taken on a journey through the building blocks of life with a mixture of dance and catchy 80s-inspired synth-pop with stunning visual projections and light shows, including lasers. It really is an amazing piece of work and worth spending 20 minutes in the dark for.
Saturday is the last night of the festival. Friday evening will feature choirs from two local schools and their presentation of the most pressing issues on the planet, including climate change and global warming. There will be three performances of Tom Dale’s dance piece Surge 360, which promises a duet between a dancer and interactive light. Lasting 25 minutes, the piece will be performed in the round three times over the course of the day, creating an interaction between the digital world of music and light alongside the organic dance moves of Tom Dale.
PRISM is an adventurous offering by Sale Waterside Arts, and it is thanks to the current arts funding from GMAC and the UK government that they are able to create such an entertaining and free show of world-class standards for their residents.
PRISM runs at Waterside Arts, Sale, until 25 November 2023
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