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, where composer Arnold Schönberg founded the ‘Society for Private Musical Performance’ - an underground club for rebels, misfits and adventurers where Schönberg could indulge his love of popular music.

This was a space free from judgement. Critics, celebrity musicians, and establishment types were shunned, and no programmes were released in advance.

Free from inhibition, Schönberg and his friends could focus on the music and the music alone. 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.