Requardt & Rosenberg, Future Cargo, Coal Drops Yard

Billed as 'a retro-futuristic dance spectacle' experimental duo Frauke Requardt and David Rosenberg's Future Cargo has been revamped and refashioned ready for its 2022 tour, which will briefly stop at Coal Drops Yard, as part of King's Cross Summer Sounds Festival.

Future Cargo had its first outing last year at the Greenwich+Docklands Festival, as an open-air installation involving music, dance and a large shipping container. The whole thing was meant as a comment on globalisation and an appeal for new beginnings, and The Guardian described is as 'enjoyably baffling.'

In this years's incarnation Future Cargo involves a 40ft haulage truck, six dancers, one musician and a full complement of creatives, including Requardt & Rosenberg's long-standing collaborators: designer Hannah Clark, lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth, with sound design and composition by Ben and Max Ringham. It's produced by The Place where Frauke Requardt is affiliate artist.

The 40ft haulage truck comes from an unknown location and carries a mysterious shipment. There are reports of fireballs, power surges and electromagnetic waves in the area. Then an enigmatic machine is revealed and a strange process begins.

Like all of Requardt & Rosenberg's four outdoor shows, Future Cargo is not easy to pigeonhole – therein lies its appeal. It is primarily a large-scale spectacle, where the audience are invited to participate by wearing headphones to connect them to the goings-on inside the truck. It aims, therefore, to combine the spectacular and the intimate, and sets itself as 'an homage to a past and a future where contact seems all too possible.'

Full details of King's Cross Summer Sounds Festival here.