The Crystal Ball

ICA, The Mall, London
29-30 June 2002

The Crystal Ball was an event that forecast the lives of the audience that attended. Presented as a sequence of one-to-one interactions, participants had their destiny revealed through professional consultations.

Experts set up stall to predict the future lives of the audience in a series of snapshots compiled on site and presented to each participant before they left as This Is Your Life To Come. A troupe of sequinned ballroom dancers greeted each guest and shadowed their journey from one prediction booth to the next. Working as a spectacle for onlookers and a fortune telling for participants, The Crystal Ball put ticket-holder’s future in the picture.

It’s Robert Wilson meets Mysic Meg. It’s Pina Bausch at a Spiritualist Meeting. It’s Miss High Leg Kick and Nostradamus at a Careers Fair… It’s The Future.

Psychic Life Scientist Julia Laverne, Optometrist Rod Dale, Career Psychologist Julie Unite, Face Readers Maura Bright and Teresa Dane, Expert in Aging Tom Hoyes, Independent Financial Advisor Alan Dickinson-Quelch, Illustrator Robin Whitmore, with Dancers Miss High Leg Kick, Abigail Davies, Polly Wiltshire, Keiko Akamatsu, Helen Plewis, Valerie Renay, Sheila Ghelani, Choreographed by Maxine Doyle.

The Crystal Ball was produced by Simon Casson for Duckie ‘Nightbird’