Blogs

This is the unseeable space in which machine learning makes its meaning. Beyond that which we are incapable of visualizing is that which we are incapable of even understanding. — James Bridle

Latent space, in the realm of machine learning and artificial intelligence, refers to a high-dimensional abstract space where data’s intrinsic, hidden features are represented in a compressed form. This space is particularly significant in the context of generative models, such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and transformers, where it serves as the groundwork for the models to learn, encode, and manipulate the underlying patterns of the data they’re trained on. By navigating through this latent space, these models can generate new instances of data that, while reflective of the learned patterns, are distinct and original.

In “Duets in Latent Space,” embodies a live collaboration between the artist or user— situated before a laptop — and generative AI models that reside within this enigmatic latent space. Through various forms of input, whether they be movements, sounds, or digital interactions, the AI responds in kind, generating visual, auditory, or textual outputs that are played back in real time.

In “Duets in Latent Spaces,” I navigate different trajectories in the domain where machine learning finds its meaning inspired by James Bridle’s contemplation on locating these spaces beyond our capacity to visualize or understand.

“Duets in Latent Spaces” is conceptualized as a lecture-performance, installation and webpages, designed to bridge the realms of the tangible, the remembered and the speculative, facilitating presentations both in person and online.

This project unfolds through a series of vignettes combining stories, re-tellings, interfaces, software, movement scores and re-performances, each spanning 3 to 7 minutes, that illuminate trajectories of the generative potential of human-AI interaction, inviting the audience into a collaborative narrative that melds human intuition, storytelling with algorithmic playfulness.

Each segment is woven with personal stories, dances, histories about cybernetics, migration, post-coloniality and choreographic thinking. They venture into uncharted probability spaces, powered by bespoke applications I’ve developed to interface with advanced generative AI models and machine learning models for body and gesture recognition.

These interactions forge semantic and action landscapes that delve into the deep, unseen dimensions of data, cultural memory and language. By reversing the hegemonic narratives of generative AI and manipulating inputs, actions, and prompts, I navigate the AI models’ generative processes exploring their emancipatory potential, forging unique cognitive recombinations with evolving texts, images, and soundscapes set within the ethereal spaces of desire, affect, memory, longing and hybrid materiality.

Central to this project are several technologies: p5.js, enabling creative coding in the browser; Next.js, for rendering server-side React applications; machine learning models for hangs gesture and body movement recognition; humansLarge Language Models (LLMs), offering extensive capabilities for generating human-like text; and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), known for producing highly realistic images. These technologies underpin the performance, emphasizing REAL-TIME dynamic interactions that highlight the creative and epistemic challenges of generative AI.

Moreover, “Duets in Latent Spaces” extends beyond the performance realm into live, interactive applications, making the underlying technology directly accessible. The apps themselves, alongside their source code, are freely available, inviting further exploration and engagement from the audience and the broader community. This transparency aims to demystify the technology, encouraging a hands-on understanding and critical examination of AI’s role in shaping our perceptions of identity, creativity, and reality.

This project and each node is a mutable invitation to ponder the unseen forces that mold our digital and physical existence (as memory and imagination), offering a nuanced perspective on the intricate relationship between human cognition and artificial intelligence. Through this work, I challenge audiences to reflect on the invisible dimensions that influence our world, inhabiting the gap between the known and the unknowable latent space of entropic creativity.

It has been presented at:

-. Generative AI, Arts and Ethics, think-tank at Chateau de Fey, France March 5th of March 2024.

-. ACCAD Future Tech | The Ohio Stare University OSU Dance (Online) February 22nd 2024

-. Unfinished Fridays @ Berlin Lake Studios February 23rd 2024.

It can be adapted to be presented as installation-performances, installations, online apps and as line and online lecture-performance.

Nodes

Hyper-elements in Latent Space

• Model: Stable Diffusion XL
• Perlin Noise
• GitHub Repository with project description, code and live app

Extraordinary Alien

• Model: MediaPipeGesture Recognition
• GitHub Repository with project description, code and live app

Entropic Haiku

• Model: GPT-4
• GitHub Repository with project description, code and live app

In Pursuit of Stolen Ghosts

• Model: Stable Diffusion XL
• GitHub Repository with project description, code and live app

Bauhaus Time Traveller

• Model: Stable Diffusion XL
• GitHub Repository with project description, code and live app

Impossible Simplicity

• Model: MediaPipe Pose Landmark
• GitHub Repository with project description, code and live app

Lots of gratitude for the granted access of the most advanced realtime models from Fal.ai

For booking and/or information contact marlon@dance-tech.net

Hi!

Its been a while, but I wanted to share the link to download this past year's Contemporary Performance Almanac 2018. The Contemporary Performance Almanac 2018 is a crowd-funded and open-source overview of contemporary performance created or presented during the 2017/18 season available for touring now.

Here is the link!

https://contemporaryperformance.com/2019/04/09/free-download-contemporary-performance-almanac-2018/

Best,

Caden Manson

============================

Big Art Group

Contemporary Performance Network

Special Effects Festival

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Recordings are available via dance-tech on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/showcase/8476725

Organized by the Fritz Thyssen project “Collective Realization – The Workshop as an Artistic-Political Format” (Institute for Theatre Studies, Ruhr University, Bochum) in collaboration with the ICI Berlin and the PSR project “Our Dance” (Heizhaus/Uferstudios GmbH) in Berlin. Funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.

Concept and Organization: Kai van Eikels and Stefan Hölscher.

Speakers: Zahra Ali Baba, Julia Bee, Sabeth Buchmann, Alice Chauchat, Bojana Cvejić, Diedrich Diederichsen, Gerko Egert, Konstantina Georgelou, Aernout Mik, Wadzanai Motsi-Khatai, Mila Pavićević, Hanna Poddig, Yvonne Rainer, Juli Reinartz, Xavier Le Roy, Heike Roms, Anne Schuh, and Sebastian Voigt.

Workshops and artistic presentations by: Jeanne-Jens Eschert, Bella Hager, Anne Mahlow, Lea Martini, Nana Melling, Aernout Mik, Marta Popivoda, and Doris Uhlich.

Assistant: Miedya Mahmod.
Graphic Design: Zahra Rashid.

Facebook: fb.me/e/ctZHBnxrp

Recordings are available via dance-tech on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/showcase/8476725

LUCHA is a AI research and creation project by Brisa MP human artist. Lucha is a machine for the performing arts. The project explores the notion of body-data and the collaboration between machines and humans, displacing  of the  choreographer category to the machine and activating a peaceful audience as representation of our controlled society.

LUCHA suggest the role of matters  are not, in the present day, and will ever be in future, only means of human expression and human creation, but they may one day enter into a de-hierarchical or even superior dialogue with the human race. LUCHA 1.0 is my first exploration into artificial intelligence that was created upon the performing art s and technology piece titled HERE.

LUCHA 1.0 with the support:

Creation Grant  Generalitat of Catalonia Culture Department .

Residence at MediaLab L´Estruch Creation Factory. HANGAR. Barcelona. 2020.

+ more 

https://caidalibre.cl

https://caidalibre.cl/lucha/

LUCHA PROJECT EXHIBITION

OPENING July 17th 2021 

DY3COPIA BODY AND TECHNOLOGY

VIRTUAL GALLERY

SECOND FLOOR GALLERIES - ROOM F: Mary Neubauer, Brisa MP

Dy3corpia

Berlin-based collective StratoFyzika is currently in residency at Lake Studios Berlin as part of the DanceTech AIR, under the mentorship of Isadora creator Mark Coniglio. As we continue developing our latest project, Phi, we will continue to blog about the process.

Daria (dancer/choreographer):

We're at the point of putting it all together, finding transitions between sections, or conversely, non-transitions (this would be like a blunt change of thematic direction with no legible attempt at a smooth segue). It's interesting to me how the piece can start to become the transitions, and vice versa. That is, how a sharp, sudden shift in tone (resulting from one of these 'non-transitions') can start to inform the structure and meaning of the whole work. For instance, without giving away too much, we're playing with sharp, surprising shifts in lighting to help define segues and lead to what we know as a new section (though the audience, of course, won't necessarily read it that way). As we experiment, I am reminded of just how much lighting – such as a simple on/off – shapes and changes my perception of space and time. Particularly as an audience member attending a performance, sitting in darkness while watching a highly lit area, when the stage lights go off, you are literally blinded, nowhere and nowhen. It can feel like an eloquent palette cleanser, or a disorientng goof, depending on how you use it. Regardless, it always makes me suddenly and irrevocably aware of myself and my body, because that is all I can sense in that moment. So then that dislocation, especially if you use it repeatedly, becomes a palpable feature of the piece.

Movement-wise, I'm starting to settle into it more, to better understand how I physically inhabit it. Formally, this piece can be quite complex. One section in particular is structured very intricately and requires constant counting, but the counts and rhythms between Hen and I alternately go in and out of sync, so I have to be careful not to get so caught up in her timing that I lose all track of my own, or conversely, to become so self-focused that I miss those moments of synchronicity with her. It's a delicate balancing act between autonomy and connectivity. Likewise, the ceaseless counting can start to bind me physically, so I have to remember to find release and abandon within the control, something I think every artist can relate to.  

Ale (visual and lighting designer):

Keywords for the lighting work are 

distance

Depth

density

gravity

time shift

Movement

libration

-

dissolve

retract

expand

overlap

The lighting transforms the stage during the entire performance into an architectural machine . Four stage lights are positioned at the 4 highest corners of the stage, while two projectors are on the ground along two opposite sides of that same square. Playing with the different nature of PAR cans lights and projection, we aim to find interesting ways to reveal the bodies and tell their movement .

From the very beginning of our work on Phi, lighting sound and movement have been developed in parallel. This kind of workflow has been very satisfying in the way every small progress in one of the fields inspires unexpected approaches to the other two.

One of the very first ideas was using quick flashes to highlight small portions of the bodies. This way we could reconstruct the choreography by showing/hiding, putting together small chunks of the original movement and giving it another shape. We could easily notice, during these tests, how the body transformed into a composition of many other bodies while being sculpted and dissolved.

The flashing, coming from different directions, was particularly disorienting when seen from the static point of view of the audience and these body chunks, once immersed into that specific space/time environment, were opening up to new possibilities and interpretations.

When we met again at Cultivamos Cultura (Sao Luis, Portugal) for the first residency, watching an updated version of the choreography where the different materials were coming together in the shape of real sections inspired me to push this flashing idea further. As the simple body movements were chasing each other in repetition and variation, the lighting score could lose its spatial randomness and start following a circular path ( the one of a loop ). This way the stage became a rotating reference frame in which the perception of said repetitiveness could be distorted by speeding up and down this visual looping reference clock.

4 lights at the 4 edges, fading in and out one after the other, as to give a key to read the inner repetition happening in the movement. As your perception of the motion of a train changes if you are you sitting on another train moving in parallel to the first one.

The idea of having an audience on two sides came when we were brainstorming about lighting positions in relationship to choreographic pathways. As we noticed it could be interesting offering two simultaneous points of view, the movement was redistributed in the space according to that, and we added to the set-up two projectors pointing towards the center of the stage from opposite sides .

The use of projectors makes it possible to work at higher speeds, and the character of their light beam, combined with a fog machine,  is able to fill the space with solid dense physical light. The space surrounding the stage disappears in the dark. While the dancers move through it, they pierce that material and phase in and out with a backlight - frontlight repetition game .This particular lighting suddenly brings the audience way closer to the performers, creating a much more intimate environment.

For this piece we decided to win some time using already-assembled sensors systems by x-io technologies, rather than starting from scratch and design our own as we did in the past.

The two sensing units, one for each dancer, are equipped with accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer. We are currently experimenting with calculations between these data to be able to extract interesting values to be used to control properties of light and sound.  An interesting approach could be calculating difference values between the two body movements, to be able to highlight the phasing out that gradually happens after a unison.

(Anthony McCall´s work inspired the use of projectors and fog to create physical lighting dimensions).

(Photo edit of Daria Kaufman in rehearsal for Phi)

(Schematic of lighting trajectories in Phi)

We will present a short version of The Wheel Connecting Fingers Company at the EnglishTheatre Berlin for the Festival Expat Expo-

2nd April 2017 from 2pm-

We will be thrilled to share with you this new project--

http://www.artconnect.com/projects/the-wheel
Here the link to the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1101704719951797/

Are you a choreographer based in Europe?

Aerowaves is a hub for dance discovery in Europe. Each year the Aerowaves network selects 20 of the most promising emerging choreographers, promotes their work, and creates performance opportunities with Aerowaves' Partners. Apply to Aerowaves and get a chance to have your work programmed by the partners of the network, whether or not you are selected as Aerowaves artists. Around 100 performance opportunities are guaranteed by the partners and supported by Aerowaves each year.

Applications open at 9am on 1 June 2016 and close at midnight on 12 September 2016.

Should you be selected as one of the Aerowaves Twenty, your work will be promoted by Aerowaves via its website for one year by an artist profile, with images, video and calendar all in one place. You may be selected to perform your work at our Spring Forward Festival. We guarantee to programme at least 10 of the current Aerowaves Twenty artists in the festival each year.

Eligibility criteria:

• You must be resident in Europe to apply

• You may apply with only one work per year

• The work you are submitting must have been made in geographical Europe

• Your work must be 15-40 minutes in length

• Your work should be easily included in a double or triple bill and have simple technical requirements

• Work by postgraduate students is eligible, but not work by undergraduates

• You must fill in the Aerowaves application form correctly, upload your video to Vimeo, providing us with the link and the password if necessary and send us the original video file by We Transfer

• Previous Aerowaves applicants, successful or unsuccessful, may apply again - but you cannot apply with the same work twice Should artists be programmed by Aerowaves partners, they will be paid an agreed fee plus travel, accommodation, and per diem.

APPLY HERE: http://www.aerowaves.org/artists/opportunities-for-artists

A worldwide call for projects made via Ars Electronica’s online submission tool will be open from mid of December till 9th of February, 2015. The submitting artists have the chance to win a residency at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. There is free access to the application process by all interested artists.

Interdisciplinarity, digital creativity and intercultural exchange are the three key criteria for artists submitting to the open call.

We are looking for digital artists who will be truly inspired by ESO, showing their wish to engage with the ideas and with ESO as places of scientific collaboration, using them as springboards of the imagination which dare to go beyond the paradigm.

You might be a choreographer, performer, visual artist, film maker or a composer – what you all have in common is that you use the digital as the means of making your work and/or the way of presenting it.

Deadline: 9th February, 2015

more information

The Trailer of Connecting Fingers is now online!

https://vimeo.com/130348459

Between the Seas Festival accepts submissions for its 5^th edition

(September 7-13 2015 at the Wild Project, New York).

Between the Seas, New York City's only international Mediterranean performing arts festival, is currently accepting submissions for its 5^th edition, scheduled to take place in Manhattan's Wild Project theater, from Sept 7-13 in 2015. Artists of the Mediterranean and Mediterranean diaspora as well as artists with a working interest in the region, collaborations between non-Mediterranean and Mediterranean artists, are all invited to apply.

Curated by Aktina Stathaki, the festival boasts a highly eclectic and daring programming that has so far included established and upcoming artists from Greece, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and beyond. Some of the artists that have been presented at Between the Seas are: Malika Zarra, Nejla Yatkin, Korhan Basaran, Pedro Gomes, Rachel Erdos, Ido Tadmor, Elias Aguirre, Esteve Soler, Yiannis Mavritsakis, The Arab-Hebrew Theater of Jaffa, Mancopy Dansekompagni and more.

This year the festival will accept submissions in 3 different categories: young artists/new works, dedicated to emerging artists and performance in-development; main program, that will present more established companies; and new plays intended for stage readings. Submission guidelines can be accessed here. The deadline for submissions has been extended to February 5, 2015. Submissions and inquiries should be sent to: betweentheseasfestival@gmail.com. For more information visit: www.betweentheseas.org.

INVITATION
online event at http://water-wheel.net/taps/view/792

March 21–22

– Launch of e-book 'Water Views: Caring and Daring' with editorial team and guest authors
– Meditation for water with renowned guest singer from Chennai, India
– Balance-Unbalance Conference launch with its founder Ricardo Dal Farra, film screening & performances

SESSION 1 – your time: http://bit.ly/e-book_launch1

SESSION 2 – your time: http://bit.ly/launch2_with-meditation-preceeding

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

E-book is available for free download in its entirety and by individual chapters. http://bit.ly/e-book_3WDS14
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Table of Contents
1. Opening - performances: Ulay, Jason Lim and online-performers
2. Voice of the Future - youth projects: performances, conservation
campaigns...
3. Activism, Art & Science - projects catalysing change at many levels
4. Art & Science - interdisciplinary dialogue and interaction
5. Hydrology – Past & Future - from India, Greece, Tunisia, California and
Australia
6. Conservation & Transmission - water rights, festivals, cultural
heritage and museums
7. Care & Dare - water values re-envisaged by community groups
8. Performance - live art, outdoor actions & online-performances designed
Waterwheel’s creative collaboration interface ‘the Tap’
9. Hydrosonics - a sound art festival hosted at NYU by Ear to the Earth

LAND V.0 is a project that investigates physical versus virtual space, and how time, space and presence are embodied via the internet towards the creation of a communicating relationship. A collaborative project between Lisa Parra, choreographer (USA) and Daniel Pinheiro, video/media artist (Portugal) for developing methods for artistic research using telecommunication technologies.
(...)
The project between Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro started as a collaboration within the Minded Motion lab #MetaAcademy – realized during the Bates Dance Festival 2013 – organized by Marlon Barrios Solano, Rachel Boggia, Nancy Stark Smith and Josephine Dorado. An online lab dedicated to the exploration of embodiment activities and co-creation across the internet.

More info: http://daniel-pinheiro.tumblr.com/LAND

WANTED: FEMALE ACTORS with movement skills or DANCERS with

acting skills, FOR ELENA BAJO'S PERFORMANCE With Entheogenic

Intent (Burn the Witch) AT 18TH STREET ARTS CENTER, LOS

ANGELES, CALIFORNIA-US- ON THE 1ST OF FEBRUARY, 2014 

DESCRIPTION

The piece is created by Elena Bajo, a visual artist who has exhibited

internationally and focuses on the social, political aspects of the site in the

city of Los Angeles. Bajo combines performance with large scale

installations to investigate the political and social conditions of change in

post-industrial structures, creating site specific work and a space of

collective action.

The performers will be required to perform in the space of 18th Street Arts

Center. They will be required to do both improvised and choreographed

script/movements determined before hand with the artist. The generator

of the piece is a political text/poem. This political text-manifesto will be

handed to the performers and it will be used to generate their individual

script/choreography. Total duration of the performance around 20 min.

REHEARSALS

3 days, total: 2 days (1h/day) one on one individual work with the

artist and 1 day (1h/day) run-through in the space with all performers

If you are interested in this project please send ASAP an email to

elenabajo@gmail.com including a web link to video file where your work

can be seen , one image and a brief bio/cv. Express very briefly why you

want to participate in the project. You will be contacted by email to

proceed forward. If you don't have a link to video online let me know and

Ithe artist would send you a text fragment to prepare something short 1-2

min that you could record in Skype or video camera or iphone.

For your participation you will receive a small fee, copy of video footage

and photos of the performance as well as credits in the program. This is

an event widely advertised and expected to be a good exposure. Please

only apply if you are interested in being part of an experimental piece,

outside of the comfort zone, that is the spirit of this project.

More information about Elena Bajo’s work:

http://18thstreet.org/events/elena-bajo-exhibition

www.elenabajo.com

THÆTA is the third performance of StratoFyzika’s Shadows Trilogy. With new collaborations in sound and interactivity (sensors building, coding), the concept still steeped in the subconscious realms and dealing with the ego: the dark and light shadow aspects of self (as in the first two parts of the trilogy) but also on the edge of the conscious, waking self; visions on the edge of sleep, whispy light shadows, multi-dimensional geometric objects, sudden sound as if from the halls of a mind in a dream state. 
This liminal zone is a state referred to as Hypnogogia. 

THÆTA embodies this borderland state. 

All merge onto the stage, interactively; body dynamics, auditory sensations and visuals function as the culmination of parts into one constellation in live performance.

Interactive Stratum

The aim of introducing interactivity in our work is to engage a live performative environment where the movement is able to affect the sound and the image as well as with those elements. To accomplish this task in a meaningful way, something beyond a 1 to 1 connection between sensors and effects parameters should be achieved. Data is not information until it is analyzed and transformed. In this direction, different pattern and gesture recognition algorithms are applied to the values coming from the sensors in order to extract the key steps out of the choreography. This technique allows the performer to establish a set of movements to create a new language within the scope of a particular performance.


Sensing Stratum

Body-mounted sensors: three-axial accelerometers and a gyroscope, are being used as the primary sensing mechanism for quantification of temporal variations in motion and gesture. THÆTA uses a specifically designed prototype of wearable electronic devices whose main module is based on Arduino Fio, and an x-bee module for wireless communication.


Sound Stratum

The soundtrack for THÆTA is composed of abstract atmospheres and drones which at a certain point morph into rhythmic patterns and lead the piece to its most intense conclusion. The sound synthesis process is connected to the sensors' signals and the overall quantity of movement is mapped to the occurrence of sound, which shapes refinements with movement data’s details. The sonification of images and movements aims to hypnotize the audience with various tricks, from noise cacophonies to otoacustic emissions - a physiological reaction to a couple of pure tones that makes the ear hair cells resonate and produce a tone.

The main sound sources have been selected from the archives of a free experimental sound internet library, curated and maintained by Thalamus Lab. The project launched an open call called Experimental Sound Lab and many artists from different countries contributed to create a collaborative library.


Visuals Stratum

The stage is designed by the visuals around and together with the performer, investigating the liminal zone through the use of live sketch techniques as well as morphing shapes modeling, audio-driven geometric patterns and pre-shot shadows characters appearences. The projections narrative takes the shape of a path, sinking into the black subconscious world, giving birth to a night creature, shaping its visions and then re-emerging to face the sharp cold touch of the light beam.

Over the whole performance experience, specific interactivity is being used to let gestures drive specific visual impressions. The interactive part of the visuals shows a complex system, where the interaction of a large number of individuals creates a new entity with a different behavior than just the addition of the single ones. This emergent behavior is modeled following the classic flocking rules written by Craig Reynolds in 1986 (separation, alignment and cohesion). To those we added a few more like a bounding area, a noise field or a perlin random walker.


Movement Stratum

The dancer’s torgue, bend, twisting and qualities of movement is the consequence of the mind directing the body’s reactions on/into the audiovisual environment. In THÆTA, the movement is focused on the embodiment of a character which is in contact with light and dark shadows, traveling through the hypnogogic state via an (imagined) Theta wave state. The choreography on it’s own is a movement map written through common brainstorm and then broken down into sections either with specific set choreography and/or an improvised score sometimes employing the Atavistic Technique.




credits:

Hen Lovely Bird : creative direction, movement writer / 

Alessandra Leone / creative direction, visual content / www.alessandraleone.com

Davic Nod / sound project / http://www.davicnod.com

Thomas Van Ta / creative code / www.thomasvanta.es

Giovanni-Marco Zaccaria / wearable sensors design & development

Jeanette Bruneau Rossow / costume design / http://www.treches.com/



Thanx to:

B-Seite festival crew
Dario-Jacopo Laganà // photography
Oriol Pastor //creative coding
L'estruch MediaLab - Sabadell

Audio contributors: Felix Blume,Jovica Storer, Dave Pape, Tessa Elief, Dizzy Banjo, Suonho, PJCohen, Virotic, Gabriela Parra, Freed, SubFeld, Sandyrb, Richard Frohlich, Batchku, Patchen, Than van Nispen, Melack, Marco Madia, PoisedToGlitch, Spt3125, Nirtana, Lost Chocolate Lab, J. Simon van der Walt, Koops, Milo, ERH, AlienXXX, Daniel Blinkhorn, Pluja de Metall, Katarrhaktes, Jef Aerts, JQR, David Flood, Kyle Evans, M. Wissar, Toko Okuda // http://www.thalamuslab.com/experimental-sound-lab



Special thanx go to the people who have been contributing to our crowd funding, supporting the production costs for the piece.


with love,
Tina Zimmerman
Wolfram Lakaszus,
Lisa and Jerry Hicks
Garth Webb
Alexandros Drymonitis
Alison Colman
Carly Pick
Margery Fairchild
Daria Kaufman
Gautam Agarwal
Savannah Lees-Haley
Michael Jenkins
Susanne Kirchmayr
Donna Larson
John and Jo Larson
Cio Dorbandt
Han Van Acoleyen
Mumu Mariane Charline Hernandez
Brianne Crabtree
Audrey Panven
Ian Smith-Heisters
Claudia Frickemeier
Tommaso Leone
Judy Kaufman
Helga Jäckel
Mary Franck

and our Private donators, of course.

Hello Everybody,

on our new issue you can find (among other things) an interview with Bojana Bauer and an essay by Monica Gillette describing her vision on the similarities between dramaturgy and film editing.

you can also upload information regarding workshops, performances etc.

Ma'akaf - online magazine for performance

best,

Lior

The Hartel Dance Group and I have been invited to perform at The Brincos International Dance Festival in Guatemala next month. We launched a kickstarter to help get us there, please check it out!

http://kck.st/1a0tTHt

I-CARE-US

http://projectoicareus.wordpress.com/about/

Evoking an alternative version of the ancient Greek myth, I-CARE-US is a new interactive digital performance that anticipates a not-so-distant future, where Unmanned Aerial Vehicles will be part of our domestic air space.

Delivering medicine, pizzas or newspapers, as contemporary versions of the carrier pigeon or even as falconry of the digital age, flying robots are invading the skies questioning their applications and the way they may share space with us. The narrative development of this performance also guides a parallel research project in human robot interaction, searching to apply insights from theatre robotics to the field of social robotics. 

UAVs started recently to be part of artistic objects, as in the case of pieces like “Meet your creator” or “Spaxels”, where these flying robots are the sole performers in astonishing collective visual choreographies. In I-CARE-US they star along terrestrial and suspended human dancers, engaging in a mutual discovery, which evokes an interspecies dialogue exploring the limits of direct contact.

I-CARES-US has been developed along the last two years and will be premiered at the end of 2013.

To follow the project´s development visit:  http://projectoicareus.wordpress.com/

Fernando Nabais

Stephan Jürgens

Soledad Barrios dares to touch us, to appeal to our empathy, and evoke an image of courage despite impossible circumstances. This ‪Madrileña‬, acclaimed by Alastair Macauley to be one of the greatest dancers of any genre, seems now to transcend dance all together. She commands our attention, emotionally and spiritually. She could be singing an aria or standing for a painter wrestling with a portrait of dignity in the face of death. 

When I first saw Soledad perform, Noche Flamenca was still an idea yet to be conceived. She had come to perform in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the invitation of Martin Santangelo, her current husband, father of her two children, and artistic director of Noche Flamenca. Martin was performing then for Maria Benitez Company, along with Alejandro Granados, a dancer from a family of flamencos, known for his relaxed, eccentric wit who is performing this week in Noche Flamenca. Almost twenty years ago now, Soledad was fast and feisty. Her fury was infectious. It was all I could do to keep from challenging her to a fight back-stage. In-your-face, raw, and scrappy, she had an erotic edge. 

Perhaps Soledad was just picking up the trend in flamenco at that time, which was to go as fast and punk as possible. But over time, she has sanded off those rough edges, matured her intense dance with elegance and and restraint. For a time, she moved with an archness that was playful. Slowly her presence became her masterpiece, more than her steps or style, her look, as precise as those are. Now a shade of raw is re-emerging. Miraculously, her performance of the flamenco "palo" Solea seems to bypass a personal statement to speak for anyone who endures pain, alone.

Never having witnessed Sarah Bernhardt, I can't compare Soledad to that legend but I can bow to a choreography and presence that dares to tackle tragedy. The overlapping of the singers at the beginning of her solo continues to haunt me with its poignancy. I wonder what Pina Bausch would have thought of her performance, what notes she would give her or further challenges.

Noche Flamenca continues at the Joyce Theater through Sunday, September 30th.