Dance Like Nobody's Watching

Venture down from the glittering concert halls of Vienna to an underground utopia of musical escapism.

Dance like Nobody’s Watching transports you back to Vienna, 1918 and into composer Arnold Schönberg’s radical underworld. 

Tired of the ignorance and conservative mindset of establishment types, critics, and celebrity musicians of the time; Schönberg dreamed of a new counter-culture. In revolt, he founded the ‘Society for Private Musical Performance’, a space where - free from judgement - Schönberg and his fellow adventurers, misfits and radicals could indulge their love of popular music.

The Society rehearsed and performed at a ferocious pace, reverberating the leftfield utopia they’d created with the sound of stripped-back Viennese waltzes. These elaborate classics were normally performed exclusively for the wealthy and the entitled, but in Schönberg’s alternate reality they were reclaimed to be enjoyed in their purest form – by and for lovers of music. 

In Dance Like Nobody’s Watching we invite you into Schönberg’s inner circle. Conductor Charles Hazlewood and acclaimed mezzo-soprano Bethan Langford, along with a Paraorchestra ensemble, create an intimate atmosphere - daring, vivid and powerful.

Bespoke projections by visual artist and filmmaker John Minton, who has worked with artists such as Portishead, Sleaford Mods and on Paraorchestra’s Minimalism Changed My Life, will combine with these era-defining orchestral reductions to transport you to Schönberg’s escapist utopia.