Fabien Prioville Dance Company , ONES UPON ZEROS

A multidisciplinary dance project on consciousness, reality, and quantum computing

What remains of reality when certainties become probabilities? When observing changes the observed? When technologies shift our self-perceptions?
The body stands at the centre – as a sensor, as a resistor, as a resonant space. The stage becomes a laboratory in which reality is not a prerequisite condition, but where it is rather questioned, negotiated and moved about. Quantum computers operate in suspended states beyond binary logic – challenging our concept of truth and decision. ONES UPON ZEROS confronts this blurriness with movement, presence and poetic precision.
Two dance pairs act in parallel – physical and virtual – realities. They influence each other across spaces, like entangled particles. Mixed reality, AI and data visualisation coalesce with choreography. The audience does not only bear witness, they become part of the system: Their presence changes the events.

ONES UPON ZEROS makes an experience palpable: Reality is not a fixed, permanent condition but rather a dynamic process of negotiation – and everybody is a co-designer of a world in flux.
Since the dawn of the 20^th century, quantum physics has demonstrated that the behaviour of matter is not entirely predictable. This is the foundation of quantum computing. Unlike classical computers working with zeroes and ones, quantum computers utilise Qbits. These can simultaneously attain states of 0 and 1 – in different probabilities. Therefore, it becomes possible to compute many possibilities in parallel, and complex functions can be carried out significantly faster.

From October 2025 until July 2026, FPDC will develop a dance piece for four dancers in cooperation with MIREVI, the Department for Mixed and Virtual Reality at Düsseldorf University. In a classical- scientific process, the team examines how quantum computing, virtual as well as augmented reality shape our perception as well as the construction of our everyday lives.

Deployment of Technology

Live dance combines with projections, data visualisation, AI elements and VR interaction. Soundscapes and precisely applied language condense the atmosphere. Augmented reality blends digital elements into the stage space in real time – a superimposition of reality and simulation that opens new choreographic spaces.

Performance and Observation

ONES UPON ZEROS creates a space of experience in which spectators become co-designers of their own reality within the performance. The work takes up the idea of a ‘participatory universe’ – the assumption that reality is constituted through the observation of beings consciously acting.
This conjures a question of power: Who determines which reality we perceive – human or machine? And how strongly does technology imprint upon our vision of the world?

The piece continues the longstanding FPDC examination with the intersections of physical and virtual reality – most recently in DANCING AUDIENCE (2023) and DIGILAND (2024).

Duration: approx. 60 mins.