What if there were other realities to which we had no access? Other lives, other worlds, other deaths, as close as they are imperceptible.

No reality now is an experiment combining dance on stage and virtual reality. It invites us into a beyond - inaccessible, unfathomable, unintelligible, like the death that it ventures to stage.

On stage, a storm interrupts a funeral wake. The rain begins to pour down, and the light trembles. Then suddenly, the image appears. You are not dreaming: your VR headset has just taken control, plunging you into a parallel world.

As you visualize yourself sitting in the very same place, the virtual copy of the stage distorts and takes liberties, proposing a double interpretation of the piece. A dialogue between these two visions then begins, like a diptych or a confrontation, expanding their own fields of resonance.
Teaming with immersive experience designer Charles Ayats, choreographer Vincent Dupont here revives one of his previous works, Souffles. Wagering that virtual reality and live performance are complementary, the two artists do not simply “augment” this 2010 piece; they propose two simultaneous versions of it, the audience beeing able to move freely between each.

"Two stagings will pursue one another, from the minimalist physical stage to the virtually illustrated reflective world, linked by the dancers' performance. A diptych to be apprehended in a new way thanks to the VR goggles. We've opted for a handle attached to these "modern theatrical binoculars" to give each spectator the choice of looking at this shared collective hallucination whenever they want to."

No reality now uses augmented reality technology to recreate the theatre venue, with the performers (actors/dancers) represented as avatars on a virtual stage. Pre-recorded using motion capture sensors and a real-time 3D engine, the performers’ movements and actions on stage are then reproduced an immersive virtual environment live during the performance.

"This set-up seems to us the ideal tool; not to augment bodies and movements, but rather to alter our perceptions, to play with the substraction, repetition, variation, or subjugation it provokes."