Part of Yellow Wheel’s 2023 Major Season

Hive Mind is an exploration of the methods in which information is learnt and transferred between multiple points, biological creatures, technological systems, between individuals and communities. Hive Mind is a self-learning AI system trialling hundreds of repeats of the same lines of code. It is a baby’s brain developing trillions of neural connections in its first years of life, a colony of bees communicating through odor and movement, a riot that started as a rumour and the reason the ‘Predicted Search’ bar pops down on Google.

“It was amazing how you transitioned seemlessly between graceful dancers and blobs of flesh that don’t know how limbs work”

“It looked like a waterfall but went feral”

“Initially it felt like some sort of extermination”

“I don’t have the mental capacity to understand it but I definitely appreciated it”

“You guys are like… athletes, if I did that I would break my spine!”

Photography by:

In July 1518, a woman whose name was given as Frau Troffea (or Mrs. Trauffea) stepped into the street and began dancing. She seemed unable to stop, and she kept dancing until she collapsed from exhaustion. After resting, she resumed the compulsive frenzied activity. She continued this way for days, and within a week more than 30 other people were similarly afflicted. The civic and religious leaders theorized that more dancing was the solution, and so they arranged guildhalls for the dancers to gather in, musicians to accompany the dancing, and professional dancers to help the afflicted to continue dancing. This only exacerbated the contagion, and as many as 400 people were eventually consumed by the dancing compulsion. A number of them died from their exertions.

505 years later, The Dancing Fever of 1518 was presented in July this year at the Canberra Theatre Centre, as part of QL2’s ‘Meet Up’ festival. Yellow Wheel performed as the final company in a line up of 6 pre-professional youth dance companies from around Australia.

Photography by: