Flying Car: How Great was the Future?

Flying Car: How Great was the Future? is a one-hour celebration – in music, dance, song, and film – of the Futurist dreams of mid-20th century America.

Flying Car explores a time when music, art, cinema, design, science fiction, all were geared to welcome the new Space Age: Space stations, colonies on the Moon, push-button kitchens, flying cars. The Future was going to be great, and we were all going to be part of it. That is, if we would have a Future at all. The constant threat of nuclear war clouded every vision of the Future with an “if.”

Composer-performer Andrew Earle Simpson and choreographer Lucy Bowen McCauley join dancers and musicians from the Andrew Simpson Ensemble exploring the Future as seen from the Past. Original short films by Simpson are screened with live music throughout.

The show also assesses the promises of Futurism in our own time. Where’s our Flying Car? And what do we do now?