ChoreoTech Lab:
Immersive Dancemaking with AI & AR

ChoreoTech Lab: Immersive Dancemaking with AI & AR

Lab Directors Heidi Boisvert & Qudus Onikeku for AI and Brian Brooks for AR| Read about the Artist Faculty
July 22 – July 28 | At the Pillow

For 24 choreographers and dance artists interested in experimenting with new technologies as tools to support immersive dance work. Dance artists from varied dance genres/traditions and of all age ranges if at least 16, are welcomed to apply.

BEGIN YOUR APPLICATION

Choreographers and dance artists are instrumental voices in new hybrid forms of digitally immersive dance and dance theater work. This next generation of interactive performative work demands nimble, imaginative, and innovative creative team members, working collaboratively, to seamlessly blend the digital and physical worlds. At the same time, multiple stages of an artist’s choreographic process and dance practice can be supported by technology; offering new ways to imagine, create, see, and experience dance.

Led by artists whose work is steeped in using technology as a tool to expand their creativity, this experiential training studio-lab will provide hands-on workshops with emerging technologies in Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality. Exploring and experimenting with the technologies to support, drive, and evolve choreographic practices and ideas will be the daily work. 

Participating choreographers and dance artists will work as teams in two distinct choreographically driven tracks: one centered around AI as a generative tool to further choreographic ideas and another around the choreographic possibilities of AR and real time 3D video. Additional technologies will be discussed, and may be available as options, to transform and reveal choreographic vision. Lab directors for each track will guide everyone in a collaborative immersive choreographic project; and for those interested, time to evolve an idea independently over the course of the lab will be available.

Choreographer Qudus Onikeku and Creative Technologist Heidi Boisvert will guide participating dance artists in how AI can hone and advance choreographic ideas in ways that further the creative process beyond initial imaginings. The track will challenge the group to deconstruct and reimagine how emerging technology, specifically AI & data, can be used to expand the language of performance. Explorations in techno-somatic & multi-sensorial experiences will involve experimentations with motion sensors, wearable sensors, depth cameras, machine learning, and theatrical control systems using game engines and other real-time interactive environments. 

Choreographer Brian Brooks will share his Viewpoint Project, which uses groundbreaking, patented technology and software to stream 3D video in real-time. While performing, a dancer’s image can be seen simultaneously through a mobile device in another location; magically overlaying the dance into the viewer’s surroundings. His compact, mobile studio, featuring infrared cameras that quickly circle a dancer, turns any space into a production studio. Experience in using this unique equipment includes being guided by Brian through a series of investigations that will showcase how the technology can support various aspects of a dance practice.

All dance artists participate in:

• Discussions with Guest Artists working in tech-driven immersive dance theater. Topics will focus on strategies to achieve the momentum needed to confidently and resiliently forge ahead in the field.
• Assignments, including viewing dance works to study the lineage of choreographers working with new technologies as well as those engaged in collaborative movement invention, as well as time to pursue personal dance interests. An important resource will be the Jacob’s Pillow Archives, a research center with exhibits, talks, reading room, special collections, and a wealth of materials documenting artists who have impacted the development of dance and appeared at the Pillow from the 1930s to present.
• Attendance at Festival performances, scholar-led talks, and other events. These occur across the Jacob’s Pillow grounds, including two stage venues.
• Building a career network through daily interactions with Festival peers, staff, Artist Faculty, artistic directors, company members, dance supporters, audiences, community members, and visitors. In departing as a member of the Jacob’s Pillow Alumni, you join an influential global alumni network that helps advance your work in dance, with friendships that can last a lifetime.

The Jacob’s Pillow School Experience is a day-to-evening conservatory style curriculum designed to instill the stamina, perseverance, entrepreneurial, collaborative, and creative voracity required to live and work as a dance artist. All program/lab members live and work onsite alongside the Festival’s international artist community. Artistic growth, multiple artistic points of view, and a vision of the possibilities that exist in a dance career abound.