A two-strand piece comprised of an Immersive XR Experience and a Live Dance Performance by Choreographer Georgia Tegou & Visual Artist Kristina Pulejkova, exploring disconnection and the slow process of coming back to oneself.
“What happens when your world falls apart? You descend into the underworld and reclaim your ruins, pick up your wrinkled thoughts. And then…”
HOMECOMING blends storytelling, dynamic choreography, and cutting-edge technology to trace the journey of a woman searching for her lost sense of self. A ghost, trapped in an otherworldly limbo, searches desperately to reclaim its body. At its heart HOMECOMING is a meditation on identity, loss, and self-discovery. The work draws from the evocative imagery of Louise Bourgeois, whose Femme Maison series explores the entanglement of female identity with space, containment, and fragmentation, and Caravaggio’s striking chiaroscuro technique, where light and shadow carve out moments of revelation and emotional intensity. Shaped by these aesthetic influences, its world unfolds like a series of moving paintings.
Developed as a two-strand piece, audiences are invited to experience HOMECOMING as either an Immersive Installation in a gallery or a black box setting, or a live dance performance set in a theatre. Both strands follow the same story arc, and can be seen as individual pieces or together as accompanying, sibling events that imagine and represent the story from two different perspectives.
HOMECOMING Immersive | Step into the role of a ghost, and unlock the story through movement
HOMECOMING Immersive, installation images by Levin Haegele
HOMECOMING Immersive blends storytelling, dynamic choreography, and cutting-edge technology to trace the journey of a woman searching for her lost sense of self. Beginning in a barren desert landscape, the multisensory experience invites participants to step into the role of a ghost, unlocking the story through their own movement.
Participants are led by The Watcher, an eternal being who helps those who have lost their way. The installation unfolds as a participatory journey through the unconscious, where gesture-based interactions in Virtual Reality give audiences the power to aid the ghost in unlocking memories. These interactions reveal the ghost’s past and the cause of her disconnection from her body, set within a resinous, dark forest.
Blending Technology, Storytelling, and Ritual
Using narrative design and world-building techniques, the piece unfolds through holographic projections, virtual reality, and a tasting ritual staged as a dinner in a dark forest. The finale emerges on holographic screens, creating a dreamlike synthesis of physical and digital realms. For the Virtual Reality component, Georgia and Kristina worked with a machine learning tool enabling gesture-based interactions, allowing participants to unlock the story through movement. The holographic projections use motion capture technology to transform dancers’ movements into ghostly, floating presences.
HOMECOMING Live | A journey back into oneself
Homecoming live, performance images by Deborah Jaffe
Homecoming live is designed as a fully accessible large scale dance performance, set in a theatre venue. Audiences follow the story of the main protagonist Lena Arbori by diving into Lena’s world and watching her memories unfold as her ghost searches for the way back to her reality. Using Motion Capture technology recorded movements from dancers Kimberly Harvey and Synne Lundesgaard enhance Watcher and Lena’s motion on stage, appearing in the form of reactive particles. The floating, bright particles act as waves of energy the characters produce in the subconscious, limbo world that the two main protagonists are traveling through.
Homecoming Live premiered at the Lowry, Manchester on 1st April 2025 and both strands were shown at The Place, London on 31st October and 1st November 2025.
Credits
Concept, Direction, Choreography, Visual Design
GEORGIA TEGOU & KRISTINA PULEJKOVA
Music Composition & Sound Design: Vincent Cavanagh / The Radicant
Costume Designer: Justin Smith / JSmith Esquire
Lead Creative Coders – Visual Artists: Uncharted Limbo Collective
VR Performers: Edd Arnold, Xan Dye, Synne Lundesgaard, Akshay Sharma, Anna Smith
Hologram performers: Kimberley Harvey (Motion Capture), Synne Lundesgaard
Live Performance Lighting Designer: Jackie Shemesh
Live Performance Associate Lighting Designer: Joe Hornsby
Live Performers: Xan Dye, Arran Green, Kimberly Harvey, Synne Lundesgaard, Akshay Sharma, Anna Smith
Live Performance Production Manager: Michael Picknett
Live Performance Rehearsal Director: Artemis Stamouli
Live Performance Performance Coach & Rehearsal Director: Sarah Walton
360 Videography: Shivani Hassard
Holograms and trailers videography: Jackie Read
VR Animation: Dave Norton / Limbotech
VR Consultant and Interact Machine Learning Researcher and Developer: Clarice Hilton
Immersive Bread Sculpture: Christiana Solinas, Head of the National Bakery School, London South Bank University
Immersive Audio Visual Specialists: KitMapper
Creative Producer: Linda Pēterkopa
Producing Consultant: Lia Prentaki
Assistant Creative Producer: Marita Anastasi
Commissioned by The Place
Supported by The Lowry, FACT Liverpool, Dance East, London South Bank University, South East Dance and Russell Maliphant Studio
Supported using public funding by Arts Council England
Accessibility Partners: Candoco Dance Company
Georgia Tegou and Kristina Pulejkova are supported by Studio Wayne McGregor through the RESIDENT 6 programme
Initial research supported by Choreodrome Residency at The Place and Light Moves Festival of Screendance – Studio Light Moves
