Mayflies VR: A New Dimension of Dance

Mayflies is Untellable Movement Theatre’s flagship program, built around the ephemeral themes that connect performance, media, and life itself. With two established streams—a pop-up live performance series and a digital performance series—Mayflies explores movement as a fleeting, immersive experience.

With support from Year of the Arts funding, we are excited to launch our newest initiative: Mayflies VR.

What is Mayflies VR?

Mayflies VR blends cutting-edge technology with the immediacy of live performance, creating a fully immersive virtual reality experience. Audiences are invited to step inside, around, and through site-specific dance performances in a way never before possible. Through 360-degree filmmaking, viewers can navigate performances freely, choosing their own vantage points and discovering new perspectives at every turn.

The Experience

The final product of Mayflies VR will be three distinct interactive experiences. Through 360-degree technology, audiences will engage with Newfoundland’s landscapes in entirely new ways—looking beneath, climbing over, and peering behind elements of the setting. Poetry is at the heart of each piece, presented through spoken word, typography, and music, while movement shapes the space and invites the audience into a world of their own making.

Two Ways to Experience Mayflies VR

Accessibility and innovation are at the heart of this project. We are offering two ways for audiences to engage:

Mobile Experience – Designed for grassroots accessibility, Mayflies VR will be formatted for mobile phones. While not everyone has access to VR-specific devices, mobile phones provide a relatively low barrier to entry, ensuring a wide audience can participate.

Virtual Reality Headset Experience – A high-fidelity version will be optimized for VR headsets, enabling professionalized presentations in galleries and festivals nationally and internationally. This approach allows for greater artistic refinement and brings Newfoundland & Labrador’s dance artists to new stages worldwide.