The Movements is a high-octane theatre/dance spectacular and the economics class you never had in school. It's a show about the global economy in the form of a 90-minute workout routine. Accompanied by a soaring musical score and multi-layered video design, four performers never quit as they transform dry data into aerobic movement before your very eyes. Covering everything from GDP and the WHO to wealth inequality and inflation, The Movements examines the mind-boggling complexity of these hot topics in a way that is accessible and endlessly engaging.
Conceived by Alex McLean with Liliona Quarmyne, Stewart Legere, Rebecca Wolfe
Starring (alphabetical) Ursula Calder, Stewart Legere, Faly Mevamanana, Liliona Quarmyne
Director Alex McLean
Choreographer Liliona Quarmyne
Composer/Sound Designer Stewart Legere
Video Designer Christian Ludwig Hansen with Anna Shepard
Lighting Designer Jessica Lewis
Assistant Choreographer Rebecca Wolfe
Producer Sophie Schade
Production Intern Kate Urquhart
Archival and Trailer Videos by Sophie Schade
Created in partnership with Kinetic Studio and Halifax Dance
Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, we aim to make extraordinary experiences that provoke the consideration of new perspectives and ideas. We prioritize questions over answers, and the discovery of possibility over the depiction of what is. This compels us to experiment with new forms and grapple with relevant questions of our time. We attempt to do this as generously as possible and have developed a unique collaborative process that favours the intuitive over the formulaic and thrives on the play between the imagined and the real. We are Alex McLean, Ben Stone, Stewart Legere, and Sophie Schade.
If you made $37 million every second, it would take hours to have as much money as the world's richest person.
The Movements is intricately-crafted and subversively entertaining and haunting at the same time. As we delight in the 80s aerobics aesthetic and the cheeky game show setup, we soon understand that the stakes are much higher, as we connect to the very real human impacts of late-stage capitalism. The Movements is both local and global, speaking to our greater humanity while demonstrating the cost on the individual, in real time.
The rigorous physicality of The Movements is thrilling to watch; it's a smart and subversive theatrical experience that comments on overarching societal structures while also highlighting the very real and exhausting effects of those structures on the body. The performers' fatigue is palpable as we are collectively bombarded with images, sounds, hard truths/facts, and repetitive exercise choreography...
Audience members are as exhausted watching The Movements, as the performers who just keep going for a full 90 minutes. And really, that's the point -- capitalism is bloody exhausting. Now what are we going to do about it?
The Movements By ZUPPA is brave, bold and boundary pushing. It's also pretty brutal. It demands a hell of a lot from its performers, but also demands from its audience. Not in a participatory kind of way (a lot of people have been asking me if there's audience participation - there isn't). It's demanding because of the constant dissonance between the exuberant aerobics routine and the severity of the information bluntly blasted in a marathon essay. The tension between the two is jarring to say the least and leaves you wondering which is more unrelenting - the choreography or the state of the world. I think of the best pieces of art as those that leave you feeling in awe, challenged or unsettled. I still can't put my finger on which experience supersedes the others in this case. One thing's for sure: you'll feel sorry to have missed this theatrical event once the chance is over.
Sometimes you see a piece of theatre that is both joyfully entertaining and deeply conflicting. I had the pleasure of witnessing The Movements when it was presented at Summerworks 2024. This piece of theatre is a feat in storytelling, design, execution of vision and physical devised creation. The entire ensemble of performers were dynamic which contributed to masterclass performances in song, dance and overall artisty. The design elements, specifically the video and projection design work of Anna Shepard and Christian Ludwig Hansen, was stunning and informative, driving the purpose of the experience home for audiences. As Zuppa states, "The Movements grapples with the legacy of the last 40 years of economic policy and asks us to consider what might be next." this is what made me feel the juicy conflict within myself as a witness. A lot of the time as an artist I feel like I'm either a pawn or a hog in the system. When I feel like I am the pawn it's usually because I'm achieving something, but is it for myself or for the people I report to, my government, donors, funders, etc? When I feel like a hog in the system, it's when not a lot is going on and I feel unfullfilled, but I need to "keep at it" to pay the bills that keep rolling in. As I sat there on an August night in the Franco Boni Theatre at The Theatre Centre, I found myself wanting to cheer for the actor that was running on the treadmill for 90 minutes to express just how rich Jeff Bezos was in 2020 compared to various other data points. I wanted to cheer because want an amazing physical and mental achievement for a person to accomplish... And on various nights! But then would I also be cheering for Jeff Bezo's greed and wealth? Yes and no. Both things are true. The Movements made me interrogate the economic system I buy into (literally with my money and figuratively) that I both dislike and survive within. I eventually ended up cheering despite my initial thought because who I was recognizing was not Jeff Bezos but the performer, the artist, the storyteller completing the exceptional performance of strength, resilience and determination in a challenging demonstration of physical exertion. The Movements had me cheering for all of us out here trying to survive in 2024. The Movements had me dreaming of what could be next in our world where community and care are valued more.
On August 7, I saw the remarkable production of The Movement at the SemmerWorks Festival in Toronto. This groundbreaking, astonishing theatre/dance show about the global economy is beautifully choreographed, directed and performed. This memorable production is at once innovative, thrilling, shocking and sometimes funny.
It's all in billions nowadays. Whether it's federal spending, war costs, or personal wealth, your million dollars just don't cut it anymore. Yet what does a billion really mean? That's the question at the heart of Alex McLean's brilliant new Zuppa show, The Movements, and the answer is simple: a billion is more zeroes than you can easily conceive.
It's a show unlike any you've ever seen. For one thing, it consists entirely of statistics — statistics that will keep you on the edge of your seat for 90 minutes. For another, it consists entirely of athletic exercise — on a scale that will make you realize you need to get to the gym, pronto. How can it be both? Simple: the performers recite statistics while performing athletic exercise. For 90 minutes straight. Simple as.
The result is visually and intellectually intoxicating. Visually intoxicating, because everything is beautifully choreographed (by Liliona Quarmyne, who also stars in the show along with Faly Mevamanana, Stewart Legere, and Rebecca Wolfe) to the relentless, catchy 80's exercise beats of Legere, backed by visual projections designed by Christian Ludwig Hansen and Anna Shepard that combine retro 80's CGI with historical and contemporary video and stills. Intellectually intoxicating, because the stats you last encountered in Macroeconomics 101 or the back page of The Economist suddenly mean something in human terms, as the truly vast inequality of the modern world is continuously expressed through allegory: allegory of seconds spent on a treadmill, weights lifted, crunches crunched, and trampolines bounces bounced.
Does that sound implausible as a piece of exhilarating theatre? You'll just have to believe me that when the quiet hero of the performance, Rebecca Wolfe, finally completed her full 90 minutes on the treadmill at the back, each second of which represented US$37 million, the total seconds thus adding up to the US$200 billion that was Jeff Bezos' pre-pandemic personal fortune, the audience burst out cheering. Not, presumably, at the gargantuan wealth of Bezos but at the exhausting allegorical feat Ms. Wolfe had brought off.
It should be added that The Movements is more than a searing indictment of capitalism's inequality. For example, the show ends with a historical survey of population, wealth, and carbon emissions that makes it plain as an actor bouncing on a trampoline that humanity's rise in material wealth (from a world of perennial near-starvation) was premised on the technological advances fostered by capitalism. And it also points out that some capitalist countries, such as Norway and Japan, enjoy low inequality and social benefits of it. And it does suggest ways of tackling the problem, even as the bulk of the production time is devoted to illustrating the sheer scale of that problem.
In terms of scale, however — in terms of the billions in the hands of the few and the very little in the hands of the billions — The Movements makes it clear that the problem if vast, the outlook very bleak. At least intellectually. But the other form of evidence presented here, beyond the statistics, is the joy and endurance and determination of the Zuppa actors on stage. How, the audience asks, once it becomes obvious how the show will work, how on earth can they keep it up for 90 minutes straight? Yet so they do, and by God if Legere, Quarmyne, Mevamanana and Wolfe, not to mention the brain of Alex McLean, can pull off a show as physically demanding as this, I am morally certain humanity can overcome the unequal billions. Somehow.
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Photo by James MacLean
Photo by Jae Yang