A quick interview with company dancer Avatâra Ayuso about why Contagion is such a special piece.

Set to an atmospheric soundscape, Contagion is a dance installation inspired by the Spanish Flu. Choreography and digital visuals echo the scientific features of the virus: rapid, random and shape-shifting.

But what was the Spanish Flu pandemic? Where did it come from, and who did it affect? And why is it being commemorated now?

1. The ‘Spanish’ Flu wasn’t actually Spanish

It became known as the Spanish Flu because Spain was neutral during the First World War, and reported freely on the disease. In contrast, countries that were actively engaged in the war censored bad news in the press to help maintain morale. In Spain, it was known as the ‘French Flu’.

2. Its shocking symptoms also earned it different names – including the ‘Blue Death’

As a victim’s lungs clogged with fluids, their bodies became starved of oxygen. As a result, heliotrope cyanosis – a blueish-purple tinge – started to spread from their extremities, including their fingers, toes, nose, ears, and mouth. This was often a sign of impending death. Ellen Monahan, from Athea in County Limerick, Ireland, recalled; ‘It kept claiming victims for months and was so deadly that many bodies turned blue-black.’

3. We still don’t know when or where the Spanish Flu actually started

Historians and virologists are still debating where the Spanish Flu came from. There are multiple origin theories, including Kansas in the United States, the Western Front in Northern France, and China. It may have begun as early as 1916, and only reached full strength in the final year of the First World War.

4. The spread of the virus was helped by the First World War

The Spanish Flu spread swiftly around the world, aided particularly by the movement of troops. Within a little over a year, it had infected up to 500 million individuals – a third of the world population – and killed up to 100 million of them. India was one of the hardest hit countries, with an estimated 18-20 million deaths.

5. It was a mystery illness at the time

Doctors didn’t know what viruses were at this time, as they didn’t have the technology to see something that small. As a result, they didn’t know how to prevent or cure it. Volunteer nurse Dorothea Crewdson recalled, ‘Nothing seems to be of any use in these pneumonia cases. No amount of careful nursing attention can check it and the MOs (Medical Officers) are getting really rather depressed by the hopelessness of the disease, they feel so helpless in the face of its virulence.’

6. A range of treatments and cures were attempted

In the face of doctors’ helplessness, ordinary people tried anything they could to treat their friends and family. One of the most popular attempted cures included significant doses of alcohol, especially whisky and brandy. Other attempted cures ranged from camphor and quinine to creosote and strychnine.

7. The Spanish Flu was most deadly to young adults

Normal seasonal flu usually most affects the very young and very old. The Spanish Flu was unusual in that the majority of those it killed were young adults, between 20 and 40 years old. A. H. Forbes, from Lancashire, recalled how ‘the physically sound and athletic types in the community readily contracted the infection, whilst the old, the chronic sick and the very young rarely did so’.

8. It was a very efficient virus

The average mortality rate was relatively modest, but the virus was incredibly infectious. This allowed the virus to spread very efficiently. The average global mortality rate was between 2-5%. However, some areas suffered very badly. In Western Samoa (now Samoa), up to 90% of the population was infected, and nearly a quarter of the population died.

9. We only recently discovered what type of influenza it was

A lengthy search for samples of infected tissue was finally successful in the mid 1990s, when viable tissue was found in an Alaskan victim that had been buried in the permafrost. The virus genome was finally sequenced in 2005. It was an avian-type H1N1 influenza virus, similar to that which caused the swine flu of 2009. Spanish Flu was, however, a far more infectious version.

10. We still don’t have a universal flu vaccine.

Influenza viruses mutate very easily, and flu vaccines can only be made to protect against known strains. When a new strain emerges, it is a race against time to create a vaccine that matches this new form. The example of the 1918 Spanish Flu reminds us how vulnerable the global population still is in the face of pandemic influenza.

A selection of images from rehearsals for Contagion at Studio Wayne McGregor at Here East.

Contagion is inspired by the Spanish Flu, and these images reflect not only the nature of the choreography but also the social history and science behind the piece.

The symptoms of the 1918 flu were dramatic both physically and psychologically. Creeping cyanosis made the body turn a dark purple prior to death. Haemorrhaging was common. The flu was often accompanied by delirium and hallucinations.

In the absence of medical knowledge, the best chance of survival lay in the nursing care that was given by countless mothers, spouses and siblings as well as by volunteer nurses – often at a risk to their own health. These acts of human kindness were the only beacons of light in an otherwise dark world.

One of the choreographic influences behind Contagion is the virus, with interesting architecture, dynamics and behaviour. From a purely scientific perspective it is capable of rapid, random mutations and is very agile and adaptive. All of which have obvious symmetries to dance movement.

The work of Egon Schiele provides a visual footnote to the prodution. Based in Vienna his work reflected early understandings of neuroscience and psychology through twisted anatomical body shapes, expressive lines and sickly colouring presaging war. Schiele’s vision of the vulnerable human body thematically suggests both war and the rapid spread of disease. On 31 October 1918 at the age of 28 Schiele died of Spanish flu, three days after his pregnant wife.

Addressed through film, text and movement, the aesthetic of the entire piece is influenced by the historical time, events and civil response to the flu.

Watch the trailer of Faultine: Faultine trailer.

The piece has three distinct sections, can you tell us what happens in each act?

Act 1 is like a synopsis of the original La Bayadère ballet, played out via a conversation between two friends. You get a sense of how these two friends feel about La Bayadère: surprise, awe and disbelief about the culture in which the ballet was created.

In Act 2 one of these characters is absorbed into this orientalist fantasy world of 19th century Europe when westerners first encountered Indian temple dancers. That character takes on some of the layers of the temple dancers who were objectified, exoticised and fetishised.

Act 3 plays on the hybridity of how we see dance in the 21st century. In an abstract way, it exposes the cultural tropes that people were quite happy to use when talking about new or fascinating civilisations. How do they relate to our own present day cultures; are we an amalgam of all these seemingly contradictory things; do we sit with these differences comfortably; what tensions confront us? It’s a lot of questions up in the air, that’s what the final act reveals to me.

No ballet made as deep an impression on me as did Petipa’s La Bayadère which I saw for the first time in the early nineties. Its impact on me was viscerally contradictory. On one hand there was much to admire in the movement and choreography. I had seen enough kitsch Bollywood dream scenes to be totally unfazed by the exotic set and the grand spectacle of the staging. However there was a constant stream of elements that pulled my attention away from the dance. At times I almost wished it were set in any other country apart from the one of my birth.

I had to double check that characters that moved with animal-like servility close to the floor with arms hanging by their sides indeed represented fakirs– spiritually-minded and disciplined ascetics (like John the Baptist perhaps) who shunned society. I quelled a deep desire to stand up and shout, “This is an insult to fakirs!” The invented gesture used as a greeting that was neither a salaam nor a namaste was equally distracting.

To an Indian any mention of a dancing Golden Idol conjures up the bronze icon of Shiva, the perfect cosmic dancer. Like everyone else in the audience I was left exhilarated by the amazing skill displayed in this virtuoso solo. However my eye kept wandering to the mudra (hand gesture) that concluded the line of the arm. The mudra in Bharatha Natyam (the dance that has its origins in the temples of South India) is a culmination of a taut energy that radiates from the torso and informs the tips of the fingers, giving them an etched, incisive quality even when they seem to project easefulness. I had to adjust my aesthetic template to fit the soft-fingered un-stretched rendering of the mudra that I saw on stage.

And what of the figure of the Bayadère herself with the very un-Indian name of Nikiya? How had a pale, willowy heroine with a pliant spine and harem pants come to represent Indian temple dancers for over 150 years? It was this question more than anything else that set me on my quest.

I wondered if a traditional dance-maker in India in 1866 would have composed a dance work set in Tunbridge Wells with a heroine named Kamala. Would their exotic “English“ Kamala have danced barefoot to the sound of drums surrounded by beautiful sets that evoked the English countryside with the silhouette of the Roman Colosseum in the background? Would all the men have worn tartan kilts in the belief that this was the national dress of the English? Would the depiction of Morris dancing have ended up looking like Flamenco?

Part of the answer to these questions lies in the fact that in 1866 the sense of cultural entitlement did not exist in India for the creation of such a dance work. It was a colonised country very much on the disadvantaged side of the cultural power balance. The power to observe, choose selectively, appropriate, and give legitimacy to one’s own perspective without anticipating challenge or debate is one of the perks of political and economic power exercised on a global scale.