Title: G.O.4 - A TECHNODRAM
Written by K.C.W.
Music by M.J.A.

Dates: August 9th - 28th(not Sundays)
Time: 19.30
Venue: Club West.

We finally managed to find the venue, after much arguing about which way to hold the map, and which turn to take! This is a major problem in Edinburgh at the time of the Festival every year, as anywhere that can hold more than 6 people gets turned into a venue for the whole of August each year. Thus some of the venues can be quite far out from the city centre, or can be impossible to find in the maze of side roads. The space that the show was to go on in, is a dance studio for the other 11 months of the year, which meant the facilities to accommodate us prior to the show were to say the least primitive. We were let in about 5 mins before the show was advertised to start, 20 mins after the advertised start time the lights dimmed.
At the outset I should let you know that I am not a fan of Modern Dance as an art form. There was a crack of thunder and on the screens (there were 2 TV monitors at either side of the auditorium and a video projection system onto a screen at the back of the stage space) there was a bolt of lightning and eight young ladies dressed in black lycra one piece jump suits with white bolero style cardigans ran onto the stage, set up to be like a fashion show catwalk. They proceeded to chant in their version of "Future speak" - again I am not a fan of this type of garbled half English/French/Chinese mash of language (I hated the books of "1984" and "A Clockwork Orange" for that very reason). They shouted this stuff to each other and performed their dance moves very well, their coordination and dexterity were excellent , but (you knew there was going to be one!) I just felt it was a lot of expended energy for very, very little gain. They then went through a series of dance movements to represent the repetitiveness of their daily routine. This consisted of:

1) They get up,
2) They shout at each other,
3) They stand under a spike in the ceiling that delivers some form of sustainer,
4) They shout at each other,
5) They choose a new leader, (by shouting at each other!)
6) They sit and perform typing and machinery operating type actions,
7) They shout at each other,
8) They go to sleep,
9)Go back to 1.

All the time they are performing this there are images appearing on the screens to try to complement their actions. Most of them were just abstract, but one was a shot of Richard holding his hand up, this was made up of shards of the image as if it was a broken mirror which flew together then apart, two or three times. Richard also spoke on their overlaid music track - just speaking a few words of their "Future speak".("ILL Jen Tu G.O.4") The third time that they were going through their daily routine they got as far as step 2, when there was a lightning flash, a thunder clap and the stage was bathed in red light, then they shouted even louder (as if that was possible!) and then they ran around seemingly aimlessly, and finally collapsed in a heap in front of the main screen, and then the mirror shards flew together and formed a picture of Richard, this then faded through to Richard performing a sort of Tai-Chi type movement while chanting the "Future speak". They then started to worship this image as "G.O.4" (Incidentally they had a numbering system that did not include 4. i.e. it went 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9). Thus they attributed some sort of mystical significance to the number 4! (Go figure!!!). After this encounter with "GOD" their lives returned to the routine we saw before! THE END. Now this show went up at 19.50 and was finished at 20.20, a little over 30 mins in duration, (for a show billed as lasting 1 hour). Ritz appeared for about 5 mins of the show. It cost £6.00 (about $10.00) not particularly good value for money. Really for die hard Ritz fans or Modern Dance freaks only!