Abilitopia + White Noise by Touch Compass

This powerful double-bill by Touch Compass brings together two unapologetically creative works that challenge how we see bodies, technology, power, and voices on stage and beyond. Together, ABILITOPIA + WHITE NOISE offer a performance that is intelligent, emotionally charged, and theatrically alive with lived experience and fierce art.

ABILITOPIA is a 45-minute black-box dance-theatre work that stages a live encounter between humans, artificial intelligence, and art. Featuring a fully AI-enabled robot performing alongside three diverse dancers, the work probes the shifting boundaries between human and non-human consciousness, creativity, and agency. From a firmly disability-led perspective, ABILITOPIA resists techno-hype in favour of something more nuanced and radical: a future shaped by artists, not algorithms. While AI is visible and present, the work remains deeply anchored in live performance. Live sound and technology, and dancers ensuring the experience is humanly felt. Magical, accessible, and provocative, ABILITOPIA invites audiences of all ages to reconsider who and what gets to create.

WHITE NOISE turns the gaze back on the audience. Emerging from creator Alisha McLennan Marler’s lived experience as a mother with disability, the work is an intimate yet defiant exploration of communication. Of being heard and unheard, seen and unseen, and the constant negotiation of narrative and agency. Through virtuosic movement, striking imagery, and immersive digital design, WHITE NOISE collapses the boundary between the personal and the political. Motherhood becomes both lens and amplifier, folding tenderness, exhaustion, rebellion, and love into a work that is sensual, provocative, and fiercely present. Live sound manipulation and a boundary-pushing score pulse through the space, animating Alisha’s internal world and confronting audience assumptions head-on.

All shows are accessible with live NZSL and Audio Description at every performance. Touch tours available for each performance.