Leila Ziu curates a virtual rave with Altered States on the Dancefloor

Featuring musical contributions from Rian Treanor, Paleman and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs.

Artist and director Leila Ziu explores dance culture and alternate realities with Altered States on the Dancefloor, a triptych of audiovisual works that correspond to three different rooms at a virtual rave. Featuring musical contributions from Rian Treanor, Paleman and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, each room sees Ziu experimenting with a variety of disciplines and styles, moving between experimental choreography, video montage, as well as 2D and 3D animation. “The confinement of this past year has evoked atmospheres and opened doorways into alternate realities,” Ziu explains. “It’s as if my withdrawals turned into alluring invitations enticing me into other realms.”

“I’d close my eyes at night and find the doorway,” she continues. “I danced, I sweated, I purged. It provided an escape, 9 months carving out this liminal space where we were able to meet, where the sound system was shaking, people dancing, landscapes shifting. Altered states was not just an altered space but an altered way of being. But it was as if as soon as we arrived we had to leave. It was sad to say goodbye but lovely to bring it back with me and paint a picture of a time, that existed alongside lockdown, where we were free.”

Previously working with Outlook and Dimensions festival as their festival site designer, as well as making videos for Sports Banger and Pearson Sound, Leila Ziu’s work is intimately connected to dance music and club culture. Altered States on the Dancefloor is a manifestation of the primal urge to connect, to sweat together in a shared space, a drive that is only intensified at a time when dancing together is more difficult than ever and the spaces left for us to do so are few and far between. Ziu envisions an alternate reality where all this is made possible and in so doing maps out a blueprint for brighter times ahead.

For more information about Leila Ziu and her work you can visit her website and follow her on Instagram.

Altered States on the Dancefloor Credits:

Room 1:
Director, Producer, Animation, Edit – Leila Ziu
Sound – Rian Treanor
Performance – Mikey Boats
Costume – Kate Tabor
Camera – Thomas English

Room 2:
Director, Producer, CGI Animation, Edit – Leila Ziu
Sound – Paleman
Performance – Manue Soum
Costume – Kate Tabor
Camera – Thomas English

Room 3:
Director, Producer, VR Animation, Edit – Leila Ziu
Sound – Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs
Performance – Manue Soum & Mikey Boats
Costume – Kate Tabor
Camera – Thomas English