We had the pleasure of meeting Doherty two years ago, for the 2021 Dance Biennale, when her Silver Lion-awarded Hard to Be Soft – A Belfast Prayer had its Italian premiere. For Altered States, the Irish choreographer will present the international co-production Navy Blue, a larger-scoped, eerie creation commissioned by the Biennale.

Set in a factory, a looming environment that reminds of production lines where twelve dancers, clad in workers’ overalls, dance in unison, Navy Blue is a sort of ode to the cruelty and uselessness of life. A visceral story of our meaning- lessness compared to the vastness of the universe. “Nothing’s coming to save us from ourselves, so aye, I will have a double,”says Doherty’s voice, out of field. The dancers are first arranged in a single line, then scatter all over, and perform their routine on the notes of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C, which will make us think of a neo-classical adagio at first, but Squid Game-like gunshots soon transport us into the piece’s lush romanticism. The background is the choreographer’s own voice, debating social inequality on a text co-written with Bush Moukarzel and inspired by Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot.