ABILITOPIA is a 45-minute black-box dance-theatre work that stages a live encounter between humans, artificial intelligence, and art.
Abilitopia, the opening work in Touch Compass’ disability-led double bill, unfolds like a mischievous invitation into a world where imagination is allowed to run unchecked. Rather than building toward a narrative destination, the piece revels in the joy of exploration, treating the stage as a sandbox where bodies, machines, and ideas collide in unpredictable ways. What emerges is a performance that feels more like a series of creative experiments than a conventional dance-theatre work, and its charm lies in that looseness. Even when the pacing dips or a vignette stretches itself thin, the overall experience remains buoyant, playful, and full of inventive possibility.
The show announces its intentions from the moment the lights come up. Before any dancer steps forward, an AI-enabled robot trundles into the audience, its blinking camera eye sweeping across the room with unnerving enthusiasm. It snaps photos, projects them onto the back wall, and offers cheeky guesses about each person’s occupation or net worth. The effect is both funny and disarming, a reminder of how easily technology can slip from novelty to intrusion. It’s a clever opening gambit: the audience is implicated before the performance even begins, transformed into raw material for the machine’s imagination. That early jolt of being observed lingers throughout the work, colouring every subsequent interaction between human and robot.
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Once the dancers join the robot onstage, the performance settles into a rhythm of short, self-contained scenes (around nine in total) that each explore a different facet of human-machine collaboration. The structure feels intentionally fragmentary, as though the artists are inviting us to watch them test the edges of what bodies and technology can do together. Some scenes are tightly crafted and visually striking, while others drift or repeat themselves without quite finding a centre. But the unevenness is part of the texture: this is a work that values curiosity over polish, and its willingness to try, fail, and try again gives it a refreshing sense of openness.
The performers, Duncan Armstrong, Raven Afoa‑Purcell, and Julie van Renen, move through these vignettes with a sense of discovery that keeps the piece alive. They stretch and reshape their bodies using props, intertwine their limbs in unexpected configurations, and experiment with how their movements can be captured, distorted, and reimagined through live cameras and AI-generated projections. Some of the most memorable moments come when the dancers’ silhouettes morph into digital creatures or abstract landscapes, as though the machine is dreaming in response to their gestures. These sequences highlight the show’s central fascination: creativity as something that emerges through interaction rather than isolation.
The robot itself becomes a fourth performer, not a gimmick or a silent prop but an active presence that shifts the dynamics onstage. At times it behaves like a playful companion, rolling alongside the dancers or responding to their movements with surprising sensitivity. At other moments it feels more like an authority figure, its unblinking gaze reminding us of the power structures embedded in technology. The dancers treat it with a mix of affection, curiosity, and resistance, and that ambiguity gives the work much of its emotional texture. The robot is never fully friend or foe; it is simply another intelligence in the room, shaping and being shaped by the humans around it.
Although the tone of Abilitopia is light and often humorous, the disability-led perspective underpinning the work adds a quiet depth. Rather than presenting AI as a futuristic marvel or a looming threat, the piece frames it as a force that reorganises participation and agency. The dancers’ interactions with the robot emphasise interdependence; creativity as something shared, negotiated, and co-authored. Armstrong’s performance is especially compelling, blending humour with precision and offering a grounded counterpoint to the robot’s mechanical logic. Afoa‑Purcell and van Renen bring contrasting movement qualities that keep the ensemble dynamic shifting, ensuring no single body or mode of expression dominates the space.
The show’s episodic structure allows it to move fluidly between moods. One moment the stage is filled with prop play and contemporary dance; the next, the performers slip into meditative sequences that resemble yoga or breathwork. Some scenes are deliberately obscure, inviting the audience to sit with ambiguity, while others offer moments of tranquillity or wonder. The variety keeps the piece lively, though it also means that not every vignette carries the same weight. A few sections feel stretched, repeating an idea without deepening it, and the pacing occasionally sags as a result. But even these weaker moments contribute to the overall collage-like feel of the work, acting as pauses between more vivid bursts of creativity.
What ultimately lingers after Abilitopia is not a story but a sensation: the sense that imagination, when given room to roam, can produce forms of beauty and strangeness that don’t need to be justified by narrative logic. The performance celebrates experimentation, embraces imperfection, and treats technology not as a threat but as a collaborator in the creative process. It’s a reminder that art can be a space where different kinds of bodies and intelligences meet on equal footing, and where play is a legitimate form of inquiry.
As the first half of the double bill, Abilitopia sets a tone of curiosity and openness for the evening ahead. It may not always be narratively deep, and it certainly has moments where the content feels thin, but its spirit is infectious. The work invites the audience to imagine without boundaries, to see creativity as something that thrives in the spaces between disciplines, and to embrace the joyful messiness of making art in a world where humans and machines are increasingly intertwined.
Abilitopia was the first part of a disability-led double bill performed at the Te Pou Theatre from 26-28 February 2026. Abilitopia ran for later former half of a 1hr 35-minute performance before a 20-minute interval.