Accidents of the Soul is a new dance-theatre show about emotions, structured as a living photoshoot in which entire worlds are built, captured in a moment on film, and then destroyed.

This solo work by Shotput's co-artistic director Lucy Ireland is about building emotions and then tearing them apart. What happens when we push feelings to their limits? Inhabiting the liminal space between 'really feeling it' and the suspicion that all emotions might be 'for show', Lucy plays with the audience’s expectations of how we feel and what we feel for. Through feat-of-endurance dancing, visually striking design and razor-sharp humour, Lucy takes aim at the stereotypes of the stoic Scot and the “hysterical woman”, creating a more nuanced self-portrait that recognises the complexity of the individual soul. She gives moving shape to the emotions within her, and one thing's for sure: they ain't only pretty.

An antidote against numbness, Accidents of the Soul is about the intensity of emotions, multiplicity of the self and the never-ending fight to find connection within a fragmented world.