Hazlewood: Conducting works if there is a spirit of trust in the room. Provided there is a spirit of trust in the room, it does not have to be end-on like the traditional form. People discern their pulse and we move and pulse collectively. We do not need to be looking at each other, as is evidenced by people with visual impairments who play in the orchestra. It is a sensory and spiritual experience as we are all connected by a kind of strange set of “cosmic antennae”.

Hazlewood: When we premiered the piece at Southbank Centre in London, the string section (the seated contingent of the orchestra) got off their seats to do what we call the “infinity mirror” where they stand in a long line and mirror each other. While they were doing that, a very curious member of the audience decided to go and sit in one of the cellist’s chairs. She clearly wanted to feel what it was like to be a cellist. When the said cellist came back to take that chair, the woman would not move. And so, the cellist actually had to play the next piece of music standing up. I thought that was brilliant.

Hazlewood: The fact that it is not a typical performance, with the orchestra and their audience both on stage, is a clue to how it represents my thoughts and plans for Paraorchestra. This is an inclusive space where the artist is no more important than the audience. In fact, audience members are just as important as artists, which is the case in any performance. If you are sitting in serried ranks of stalls looking at a brightly lit stage at the far end, with the sumptuous and awe-inspiring sound of the orchestra emanating from it, you are impressed and quite possibly intimidated. That is not actually the case! They are fallible humans just like everyone else! Music is an act of love, an act of communication from one to another. You need both in order for it to work. The Nature of Why is about telling a story—telling a really important story and telling it with love. So, it continues the orchestra’s philosophy and direction of travel.

Hazlewood: I hope they will say, “We had a really good time.” I also hope they will go away feeling emboldened to ask the question “why” about everything. Because isn’t curiosity a wonderful fact of humanity? Without curiosity, where would we be but dead inside? Just like Feynman who asked questions on the depth of “why” beyond what most of us can imagine. He is perhaps the physics version of Beethoven or Mozart. He just digs so deep and makes it discernible to your eye. So, he is a bit of a genius and my relationship with him remains as hot as ever. I hope they will go away with a pronounced sense that difference in humanity is a value and not a curse.

Bowditch: The dance and the music were being created simultaneously, but I was very much responding choreographically to the concepts of the work which come from a piece of text by Richard Feynman. We really wanted to play with that idea of bringing the audience onto the stage, to have that sensation of what it is to look at an empty auditorium. As an artist, I am not very good at having a passive audience. I do not respond well to the thought of “I am here to entertain you,” but actually “we are here to have a conversation or an interaction.” I want this to be a meaningful interaction, and I want it to leave you feeling something—which I think we achieved. I wanted everyone to access everything. I wanted every show to be relaxed. I wanted wheelchair users to have the freedom to go wherever they wanted, because what I never experienced at the theatre was having much choice about where I put myself. That choice is made for me based on the infrastructure of the building. So yes, it was pretty “selfish” to have the freedom of “I want to be able to go wherever I want to go.”

Bowditch: Magnets, attraction and repulsion are brilliant things to work with in a dance context. I invited the dancers to “imagine that your right hand has to repel and your left hand has to attract,” and for them to work out how that might work in making contact with another dancer or moving in a space. We also worked with the concept of magnets attracting and repelling different parts of your body to the floor. I think this show is doing things that other shows are not doing. It is very rare for an audience to be invited on stage. It is also very rare for a marimba to be spun on a stage. The show is very reliant on all the performers using all of their senses in the show. Everyone will experience their own version of this show. No two people will have the same experience because some people will join in, or not. People will have musicians that are very close to them or not. So, people will see different things. I wanted to create a work that could be viscerally felt—not just a show that you watch or listen to but a show that you feel. In that sense it is very human.

Bowditch: The dancers are ones that I have worked with for a long time, and they all had that incredible skill of being able to “read an audience member” and have a sense of whether someone wanted to come and interact with them or they were just happy to just be in amongst it and let it happen. And either way, it is perfectly fine. In our introduction, Charles and I make it really clear that this is an invitation, but it’s not an obligation. But I think that people get swept up in it and they become part of it without even realising. I trust the dancers to really “read” the room and do the right thing by the audience.