ON TOUR NOW
FORMULAE & FAIRY TALES
Don’t miss the show that LA Dance Chronicle called, “Dance theatre at its finest.”
MATH, SEX, FAIRY TALES, HUMOR, DEATH…
Formulae & Fairy Tales is a full-length work casting the life of Alan Turing, mathematical genius and World War II codebreaker and the technicolor mythology of his favorite film, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. After the war, Turing was criminally prosecuted for being gay and forced into chemical castration. In 1954, he died by eating an apple laced with cyanide, an act eerily foreshadowed by Snow White.
The production places the cold, high-stakes world of mathematics, artificial intelligence, and cryptography alongside a vivid, twisted fairy tale palette. The choreography blends historical events, sexuality, gender identity, and our essential humanity. Sweeping video projections and an original music score create an immersive theatrical experience.
Friday, October 13 — 7:30pm
Saturday, October 14 — 7:30pm
The Broad Stage
Before the Saturday, October 14th performance, join us for our Annual Soirée from 5pm-7pm!
“A wonderful, beautiful, and often heart-wrenching work of art.”
“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
VIDEO PRODUCTION
DESIGN BY:
NightLight Labs
LIGHTING DESIGN BY:
RS Buck
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
Review: In a breakthrough show, Invertigo Dance takes a delicious bite from a forbidden apple
“In a breakthrough show, Invertigo Dance takes a delicious bite from a forbidden apple.”
– Los Angeles Times
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