Anyma Says He ‘Doesn’t Really Feel Much’ From Most Large-Scale Dance Shows

With his show at Sphere, Anyma created one of the dance world’s most talked-about live experiences in recent memory.

As the Italian-American producer tells it, this show and the sprawling visual world he’s long been focused on creating in tandem with his music is a response to what he was seeing elsewhere in the world of live dance and electronic shows.

“The reason why I went into the production of the visual experience was because I don’t really feel much from live events,” the artist born Matteo Milleri told Billboard in a recent feature story about his work and his just-released album, The End of Genesys.

“Of course, the underground dance stuff is great, because that’s its own thing,” he continues. “I’m talking about the big concerts, the big festivals, the big productions. For me, even with the technology and the budgets available, I just went home with my ears hurting. It’s difficult to even grasp an artist’s perspective when the production is overwhelming.”

His idea was instead to create visuals that would allow him to “basically augment your purpose and your art with it. … That was the whole idea behind everything.”

The idea crystallized dramatically during the artist’s 12-date residency at Sphere, running from December through March. Fusing his own longstanding penchant for technology and boundary-pushing tech capabilities at the venue, which is built around a 160,000-square-foot LED screen that curves and reaches a height of 240 feet, Anyma and his team created a visually stunning production that incorporated themes of technology, nature, love, life and more.

The show’s head creative Alexander Wessely told Billboard that co-creating the show “was like re-learning a language while simultaneously writing poetry in it, trying to shape something new while staying in control of the chaos.” 

But Anyma’s ambition to create something different did ultimately work. Not only was the show well-received by the hundreds of thousands of fans who saw it, its first eight alone grossed $21 million, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore.