The Southbank Centre in London is hosting Playing With Fire, a virtual reality installation that lets audiences experience pianist Yuja Wang performing as if in two places at once. Reviewed as part of the Guardian's arts coverage, the piece pairs nine musical works with nine immersive digital dreamworlds, likening the effect to "Disney's Fantasia on steroids." It matters as an ambitious fusion of live and virtual performance, created by Wang alongside director Pierre-Alain Giraud and artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, and produced by Vive Arts and Atlas V.

Wearing VR headsets, audiences watch a digitised avatar of Wang perform pieces by Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Bach, Liszt and Prokofiev, each accompanied by a striking visual world — from submerged seascapes to infernal, lava-strewn landscapes evoking war and destruction. The music itself is played live by a Steinway Spirio player piano programmed by Wang, while roughly two dozen fellow audience members appear as ghostly humanoid shapes within the visuals. The show, which has previously toured Cannes, Paris and Shanghai, runs at the Southbank Centre until 3 January and closes with an unamplified, headset-free performance of a Chopin waltz.