FORMULAE & FAIRY TALES
The show that LA Dance Chronicle called “Dance Theatre at its finest.”
“In a breakthrough show, Invertigo Dance takes a delicious bite from a forbidden apple.”
MATH, SEX, FAIRY TALES, HUMOR, DEATH…
A queer fairy tale world full of poisoned apples, queens of all kinds, and cheeky jabs at binary coding.
Formulae & Fairy Tales is a blend of dance and theatre, about the life and work of codebreaker Alan Turing, and his connection to Snow White. It plays with Turing’s work in artificial intelligence and computer science, and reclaims queer stories with power and grace.
Join us inside the world of mathematics and twisted fairy tales and explore the ever-present, increasingly layered question:
Are you a human or a machine?
“The brilliant choreography of Laura Karlin, Invertigo Dance Theatre’s Founding Artistic Director, creates a dream-like, fascinating world of mathematics, artificial intelligence, and cryptography that is also a love story, and a tale that expresses great loneliness and injury.”
– Diversions LA
CREATED BY:
Laura Karlin
ORIGINAL CAST:
Cody Brunelle-Potter, Hyosun Choi, Jessica Dunn, Spencer Jensen, Corina Kinnear, Dominique McDougal, Luke Dakota Zender
2023 TOURING CAST:
Cody Brunelle-Potter, Will Clayton, Hyosun Choi, Jessica Dunn, Corina Kinnear, Derion Loman, Luke Dakota Zender
2025 TOURING CAST:
Haylee Nichele, Jessica Dunn, Owen Scarlett, Nathan Makolandra, & Corina Kinnear
LIGHTING DESIGN BY:
RS Buck
VIDEO PRODUCTION
DESIGN BY:
NightLight Labs
ORIGINAL MUSIC BY:
Toby Karlin, Julia Kent, Eric Mason
FORMULAE & FAIRY TALES
Explore the world of this performance.
PRESS
Formulae & Fairy Tales: Sublime Dance from Invertigo Dance Theatre
“Sublime… the end result is both magical and precise, story telling crafted from motion.”
– Diversions LA
“A wonderful, beautiful, and often heart-wrenching work of art.”
TECH RIDER & ENGAGEMENT
Booking Formulae & Fairy Tales? Choose from this rich menu of options to create the combination that best matches your community. If you know everything or nothing about Alan Turing, computer science, queer activism and LGBTQIA+ histories, dance as a social practice, everyone will have a place in this exploration.
Dance Theatre Workshops
All workshops offer a combination of dance/movement, narrative methodologies, and socio-cultural inquiry. Different choreographic engagements with social themes can be created.
Venue: Dance studio, community room or theater space.
Duration: 1 – 3 hours per workshop
1) Transformation through Fairy Tales, Symbolism & Storytelling
Transformation through Fairy Tales, Symbolism, and Storytelling Engaging directly with objects and narrative sequences, participants explore movement practices that invert and transform symbols and stories into worlds with new meaning.
2) The Invertigo Inversion Technique: Gender Play & Inventive Partnering
The Invertigo Inversion Technique: Gender Role Play Drawing upon choreography from Formulae & Fairy Tales, participants will play with re-socializing gender through unlikely pairings, unexpected movements, and symbols that are inverted to upend how we embody gender.
3) Machines, Math & the Body Politic
Machines, Math, & the Body Politic With Alan Turing’s question at the center of this workshop, participants will experiment with the borders and possibilities between machine and human. Choreographic prompts will generate a sequence of outputs and equations, and participants will collaborate in creating a movement tableaux of the body politic.
Panels, Lectures, Public Dialogues
Interactive discussion formats tailored to your community interests in the themes in Formulae & Fairy Tales.
Venue: Lecture halls, auditoriums or theaters.
Duration: 30 mins – 2 hours
1) STEAM: Storytelling Through Movement at the Intersection of Arts + Science
2) Alan Turing, the Turing Test & LGBTQ Heroism
3) Binary Codes: From Machines to the Gender Revolution
Salons
Small-scale, intimate opportunities for community dialogue through lively, inventive prompts and activities for postshow engagement or afternoon campus activity.
Venue: Lobbies, theaters, community rooms.
Duration: 30 mins – 1.5 hours
1) Data, Dance & Donuts
2) Apples, Engineering & Artificial Intelligence
3) Storytelling & Movement: An Elixir for our Times