ABOUT THE CHOREODAEMONIC COLLECTIVE
Founded by Laurel Lawson and Sydney Skybetter, the Choreodaemonic Collective is a collaborative ensemble of artist-technologists that partner choreography with technology to investigate the boundaries of the individual, collective, and environment. From March 18-25, 2025, Lawson and Skybetter will be joined by collaborators Kevin, Colin, André, and Eryk in the Pillow Lab to develop The Choreodaemonic Platform, an installation and performance in which artists, audiences, and artificial intelligence (A.I.) contend with the sometimes symbiotic, sometimes adversarial relationship between nature, art, and emerging technologies. The collective came together to share a bit about their inspirations, studio must-haves, and the unique complexities of working with technology.
What’s inspiring you right now?
Kevin: Creative facilitation has really got my brain going. When I turn an audience into co-creators of a shared performative experience, all kinds of magic can happen.
Laurel: I’m continually synthesizing everything around me, connecting different impulses, understanding what myths and stories are living in the moment, and how an experience can be reframed into other senses and ways of being. Right now I’m reading a lot of research papers on neuropsychology, haptics, and microcurrent, as well as listening to technical bluegrass, and absorbing urban sculpture and the patterns pedestrians make in intersections.
André: I’m inspired by the ways we can start to actualize the narratives within us and between us through various uses of technology that go beyond its expected uses. Finding how our stories have meaning beyond what may seem evident is a wonderful gift our creative work can offer. I am using my narrative as a way to make sense of the past and find ways of laying better foundations for the future.
Is there a piece of advice or wisdom that has stuck with you as an artist?
Kevin: My teacher told me about being a pallbearer at a funeral, and the odd sensation of both experiencing that moment and simultaneously knowing he’d try to ‘use’ it later. An artist is always watching.
Sydney: Balanchine, who was a despicable human being, nonetheless said a lot of poignant things about being an artist. One of his favorite things to say to his dancers was something along the lines of, “Don’t think dear, just do,” in essence asking his company to not question his authority, behavior or decisions. This has stuck with me, and I’ve long endeavored to work with folx in the fashion of exactly the opposite.
Colin: My mentor, composer Udo Kasemets, instilled the importance of continually “starting from scratch” as an artist. When you start to feel comfortable or expert in your practice, it’s time to question and rethink what you’re doing—especially when technology is involved. Can I make it simpler? What would it be like if I did this in a completely different medium? What are the roots of the tools and systems on which I depend?
How has your cultural background or heritage influenced your work?
Laurel: Multiple threads of being and place and relationship come together in my own practice as well as in this project. As an artist who prioritizes collaboration, my understanding of queerness and the depth of communication that comes from disability practice and community organizing are integral to cultivating this team and the kind of intervention we hope to offer to the field, as well as the close partnering choreography I love to make. I only began to realize in the last few years how deeply my Appalachian heritage has shaped the rhythm and timbre and weightiness of my storytelling.
André: My cultural background provides more than I will ever be able to use in this lifetime. As an African American with Haitian ancestry, I find the African Diaspora to be an endless source from which to draw in terms of creative exploration. Our stories are much more than what is recognized on the surface. I like to think of my work like the African American tradition of quilting – stitching layers together to create a tapestry that simultaneously holds a story that can be passed across generations.
What’s one thing you always have with you in the studio?
Everyone: COFFEE
Can you describe your artistic journey in three words?
Laurel: Expansive, innovative, collaborative.
Colin: Continuing curious detours.
André: Subliminal, reciprocal, hyphenated.
Is there something you’re currently reading, watching, or listening to that’s influencing your work?
Sydney: No matter how much technology we work with, as choreographers, our base elements remain bodies, time and space. As such, lately I’ve been watching a lot of movies in outer space! Gravity is a fave for how its cinematography bounces around human subjects, but Interstellar is an all time favorite for how it plays with spacetime as performative media.
Eryk: Right now I am reading everything I can about noise: noisy information environments, noisy sounds, noisy images. Noise is everywhere! It’s been inspiring to think about how artists like Nam June Paik looked at things like noise that might be considered a nuisance and still found something compelling.
Colin: Recently, I’ve been working my way through the albums of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, which has me thinking about the ways that bodies and algorithms intertwine. He uses electronics, his voice, and duration to develop inter- and intra-active feedback loops that are so soothing and engaging at the same time.
André: I have been slow-reading the text Black Leopard, Red Wolf: The Dark Star Trilogy #1 by Marlon James. I have been an admirer of his writing for some time now.
What’s one challenge you’re excited to tackle in your current project?
Eryk: I’m excited to use technology that invites people to connect with memory in tangible ways, making the past feel like something in our bodies rather than our heads. Sometimes, technology and historical archives can feel very distant from our lives. How might we make them move us?
Colin: I’m excited to find ways to make the technology “fade away” in this piece—to use it in ways that bring senses of the history and place of the Pillow to the forefront, felt in the body, and supportive of ways to give back to it through our embodied interaction.
What can audiences expect from your time in the Pillow Lab?
Laurel: We’re creating ways for anyone to experience dance firsthand, in their body. We’re leveraging the Pillow’s immense data resources to explore how we interact with space and place. We’re using sound, sight, and vibration to create immersive kinesthetic experiences for every body.
Kevin: We’re exploring multi-body interactions with computational systems, as well as technological representations of bodies, both synthetic and historical.
André: We’re going to be digging into the Pillow, bringing out the voices, dances, and moments in time that have made it what it is today. Expect to dance with some “ghosts.”
Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together in residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus.
A year-round incubator of new work, the Pillow Lab hosts ten artist residencies this fall, winter, and spring. Learn more about the dance artists who will be joining the Pillow during crucial development, research, and technical stages of choreography-driven projects.