Matthias Sperling performs Now That We Know. Photo: Foteini Christofilopoulou

I have a friend who makes difficult decisions by flipping a coin. Thanks to the advances we’ve made in neuroscience and psychology, there is now evidence to suggest that our minds are already made up by the time we’re asked to choose – have been made up, in fact, minutes or even seconds after we were offered the choice. We flip our coin and if we’re happy with the outcome, we’ll take the result; if we secretly, subconsciously prefer the other outcome, we’ll promise ourselves ‘best of three’ or ‘that was a practice run’. My friend, then, is trusting herself to herself, to the mind’s ready rationale. But it looks for all the world like she’s just giving in to fate, as coin flippers always have.

This is the problem of Matthias Sperling’s Now That We Know. Set in a future where we have closed the gap between body and mind, where ‘the mind is a body part’ and we’re able to ‘get moving in our whole physical body-minds’, Now That We Know is about a new, intuitive choreography of the body that embodies, represents and is symbiotic with the ‘choreography’ of the mind. Every gesticulation is intimately connected with a corresponding emotion or statement of expression, as part of the outcome of our brilliant scientific advances.

Or, at least, that’s what I think Sperling is getting at. What I actually see, while rigorously plotted and poised physically, and impressively memorised verbally, seemed to be pretty standard choreographically and actually a bit boring generally.

It turns out that when a piece is advertised as a performance lecture, you really are going to get a lecture. I take a lot of notes, including, ‘Oh my God he’s literally dressed as a 70s guru,’ and I don’t feel that I miss much in the way of performance while I listen and look at my notebook. This is partly helped by Joel Cahern’s pulsating, proto-sci-fi soundscape, over which Sperling’s amplified, spiritual-leader-cum-mad-scientist lecture echoes – the sound design, the lighting and Sperling’s incredible long black wig and indoors sunglasses have all cemented the concept of Guru From The Retro Futureverse in my mind. But it’s also helped by the fact that the movement language seems unfinished, exploratory, confined to limited planes and even occasionally totally irrelevant. I am in a lecture. I don’t habitually watch my lecturers dance.

There’s no real way to do justice to Sperling’s lecture in a review. It requires an answering essay, even if it is likely to be a sceptical one. What I can say is: he is capaciously imaginative, and, when I’m actually zoned in to the lecture, very funny. In the ‘now’ of Now That We Know, we are so au fait with movement’s inclusion in all forms of the mind’s articulation that we expect our politicians to create a choreography that embodies their manifesto, allowing us to see the societies they promise us arcanely visualised, up for viewing and testing. He alludes to an Institute of Neuro-Choreography, whose studies discovered the ‘hypnotic organ’ in each of us, the very same organ he spends much of the lecture encouraging us to ‘open’. I can’t pretend I know exactly what he’s on about, but I can see someone writing an amazing work of speculative fiction using the Institute and the ‘hypnotic organ’ as a springboard.

And this is the ultimate issue of Now That We Know. It’s a springboard piece. Its ideas are interesting, its research is profound, its intelligence is obvious, but its performance is frustratingly dull. Not enough is done. Though it points to a world where conceptual movement and, I suppose, conceptual dance is accessible and transparent to everyone, Now That We Know is so opaque that I am pretty sure it would alienate most people I know, even the ones on board with outré contemporary dance. Perhaps that’s the problem with being a guru from the retro futureverse; people just aren’t ready for you yet.

Now That We Are Here was on at Sadler’s Wells. Visit Matthias Sperling’s website for more info.