Project/ The Sensationalists

Performance, 2015

A collaboration between Maiko Yamamoto and Vancouver’s Company 605, The Sensationalists was an experimental dance performance that transformed the theatre into an interactive space, where the audience was mobile and placed inside of the action. The piece explored concepts surrounding various sensory phenomena, including autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), the pleasant, tingling sensation that moves up and down the head, neck and spine. 

Merging Company 605’s high-powered physicality and Yamamoto’s unique theatre-making methodologies, The Sensationalists altered the audience/performer relationship, resulting in an immersive and unexpected performance.

The title of the work evokes a double entendre. The Sensationalists are a group of people who gather together in the same space to help each other experience different levels of sensation in order to feel better in their daily lives. But through the performance they also reveal themselves to be a group of exceptional dancers, through which we all experience what it is to be sensational.

Created & Performed by Josh Martin, Lisa Gelley, Laura Avery, Lexi Vajda, Walter Kubanek and Jane Osborne.

Directed by Maiko Yamamoto
Choreography by Company 605
Sound Design by Gabriel Saloman
Lighting Design by James Proudfoot
Radio Technician by Bobbi Kozinuk
Costume Design by Leah Weinstein
Apprentice by Sophia Wolfe
Stackers: Sophia Wolfe, Jessica Wilkie, Hayden Fong, Alex Tam
Rehearsal Direction by Susan Elliott
Produced by Company 605
Photos by David Cooper