Mere Mortals review – a dazzling, maddening ballet for the AI age
San Francisco Ballet has brought Mere Mortals, a lavish new production reimagining the myth of Pandora's box through the lens of artificial intelligence, to the Edinburgh International Festival. Commissioned by artistic director Tamara Rojo, the work unites choreographer Aszure Barton, composer Sam Shepherd (Floating Points) and digital artists Hamill Industries, blending dance, live orchestral and electronic music, and striking projected visuals to explore the unknown forces humanity may be unleashing through technology. The result is a visually spectacular but narratively ambiguous piece, praised for its craft yet criticised for abandoning the emotional clarity of its source myth.
The production features mesmerising, AI-assisted screen visuals resembling molten pixels above dancers who form shifting mass formations, evoking armies, automatons or lines of code. Key performers include Jennifer Stahl as Pandora and Wei Wang as Hope, alongside scenes depicting Prometheus and Epimetheus and a distinctive pas de deux for Pandora and her husband, all set to a hybrid electronic-orchestral score played live by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The show runs at Edinburgh Playhouse until 30 August before transferring to Sadler's Wells in London from 9 to 12 September, though the reviewer notes the piece offers little emotional payoff or clear moral by its end.
- San Francisco Ballet stages AI-themed reimagining of Pandora's box myth
- Combines dance, live orchestra, electronics and striking digital projections
- Visually stunning but leaves reviewer wanting more emotional resolution
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Pandora’s box comes from Greek myth: Pandora opens a forbidden container, releasing troubles into the world, while Hope remains inside. The story has often been used to explore curiosity, danger and the consequences of human choices.
Mere Mortals reworks that myth around artificial intelligence, technology that can perform tasks associated with human thinking. San Francisco Ballet’s production brings together choreographer Aszure Barton, composer Sam Shepherd, digital artists Hamill Industries and a live orchestra, using dance, music and projected images to suggest a world shaped by forces people may not fully understand.
The ballet’s central figures include Pandora and Hope, as well as the mythological brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus. Its connection to the Pandora story provides a way into current questions about how people create and use powerful technologies, and what those choices might bring.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Mere Mortals can be seen as an ambitious response to a complex subject: its shifting formations, AI-assisted imagery and hybrid score make technological uncertainty vivid through dance rather than spelling out a single moral. That ambiguity may invite audiences to form their own interpretations, while the production’s visual and musical craft gives the work force even where its story remains elusive.
The case against
The production’s spectacle and abstraction may come at the cost of the emotional clarity that makes the Pandora myth compelling. Without a clear moral or satisfying emotional payoff, its images of technology’s unknown forces can feel suggestive but underdeveloped, leaving audiences impressed by the craft yet unsure what the work wants them to feel or understand.