The prospect of getting back in the club is looking more realistic every day, with several experimental gigs getting good results across Europe, and a few lucky UK clubbers on track to attend events ahead of lockdown’s scheduled end date in June. Thanks to David Byrne, New Yorkers will also be able to enjoy a socially distanced rave when clubs reopen (albeit at limited capacity) in April.
The aptly-named project, Social!, will see the Park Avenue Armory host 100 attendees at a time, and was specially commissioned for the venue’s recently-launched Social Distance Hall.
The experimental club will be soundtracked by a playlist curated by the former Talking Heads frontman — alongside his Social! co-creators, Broadway set designer Christine Jones and choreographer Steven Hoggett — and mixed by the New York-based DJ Natasha Diggs. If you’ve forgotten how to dance over lockdown you’re in luck, because there will also be a choreography voiceover from Byrne himself.
“The Armory’s commitment to supporting and partnering with artists in the creation of new works that are responsive to society is a foundational component of who we are as an organisation,” says the Founding President and Executive Producer of Park Avenue Armory, Rebecca Robertson. “The commissioned work that is part of Social Distance Hall exists, not despite, but because of the pandemic that we have all been living through over the last year.”
“With Social!, we are delighted to invite New Yorkers to come together through a communal, safe, and multisensory experience that draws on the building’s acoustics and grand architecture, and the Armory’s cross-disciplinary programming mission.”
The 55-minute “solitary participatory experience” will begin April 9, and if it follows in the footsteps of Byrne’s Broadway show, American Utopia, then New Yorkers are in for a socially distanced treat.