Spaghetti Weston
Anchored is a site-responsive aerial performance created by Scarabeus Aerial Theatre and LV21, staged on and around the light vessel at Anchor Wharf in the Historic Dockyard Chatham.
It premiered on Midsummer evening, 21 June 2025, as part of the Estuary 2025 festival and Refugee Week. Gary Weston filmed the performance as the sun went down, then edited the film and its sound.
LV21 was built as a floating lighthouse: a landmark that guided ships safely and offered refuge to those in trouble at sea.
Ships are traditionally called “she”, yet sailors long held that women on board brought bad luck. Anchored, made by an all-female creative team, turns that superstition around and draws out the tenderness of a crew looking after one another.
The choreography grows out of the everyday work of a lightship crew:
Three aerialists move across the upper deck, gantry and lantern as dusk falls, with an atmospheric soundtrack and a lighting design by Azusa Ono turning these ordinary tasks into something abstract and strange.
Gary Weston filmed from the wharf through the fading Midsummer light, following the performers at height while keeping the ship, the river and the audience in frame.
He then edited the film and its sound, using the live soundtrack. The film closes on a Refugee Week message about the millions of people forcibly displaced around the world.
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