Weight and height discrimination have been cemented within the very building blocks of the dance world for decades. Overt or sly, targeted comments about the body have the ability to cause long-lasting pain, insecurity, and doubt. And dancers are no stranger to body policing; it’s what’s turned many away from the art form all together. All of this reaches a new level, however, when size discrimination becomes a norm in casting, as has heavily been discussed in recent years thanks to the growing body-positivity movement.

A recent win for size inclusivity has even cemented itself legally: On May 26, 2023, New York City mayor Eric Adams signed new legislation to prohibit height or weight discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations, adding these two physical characteristics to the list of those protected, which includes race, gender, age, religion, and sexual orientation. New York City is not the first to do so: Michigan—notably, since 1976—and Washington State have similar laws, as do cities including Washington, DC, and San Francisco. Such legislation has also been introduced in New Jersey and Massachusetts.

While not net-new, New York City’s ordinance, which is slated to go into effect on November 22, certainly feels like a step in the right direction given the employment opportunities for dancers in the city that’s home to Broadway and is also the largest hub for ballet and modern. The most immediate response could be the removal of all size-disqualifying terminology from casting calls and contracts. Preferences for certain body types—whether in written form or expressed verbally—should now be expunged. And any instance of such can be reported to the city’s Commission on Human Rights for further investigation into whether or not size discrimination has taken place.

However, the exact extent of the ordinance’s implications on the dance world are cloudy. It does state that certain exceptions are allowed when it comes to seeking certain weight/height requirements in employment should those qualities be necessary to perform the job. Could this be used as a loophole to continue casting the same thin and tall body types season after season? Could the need to fit premade costumes prevent replacement dancers of varying body types from being cast? The answers are unclear.

Similar questions arise when it comes to contracts: Over the years, some performers have shared contract clauses that indicate they must stay within a 5-to-10-pound range of their hiring weight or risk termination. Tragic tales of weigh-ins at colleges and professional dance jobs have also made their rounds throughout the industry.

When I began my dance training in high school, I was dumbfounded to hear that a close friend—who had starred in a popular youth-centric Broadway musical for several years—had her weight monitored regularly in accordance with her contract’s stipulations, stating she had to remain within a certain range. All of this took place while she entered puberty and her body began to naturally grow.

Her story was not the first one I’d been made aware of, nor would it be the last. Throughout adolescence and early adulthood, I’d experience my own. My entry point into the art form came through musical theater. I pivoted to dance—zeroing in on tap, jazz, and contemporary—in early high school, always feeling out of place when I stepped into what felt like thin-only studios. Because of this, a lot of my early training was done privately: taught by friends during our lunch period or via YouTube each evening.

Still, staying away from studios didn’t completely prevent this stigma from reaching me: Numerous times throughout my teenage years, I was told by fellow performers that my body was an instant disqualifier when it came to booking gigs. Even recently, after swinging into a production of 9 to 5: The Musical in Mesa, Arizona, a week before opening, I overheard an audience member’s pointed words mid-show: “Why did they cast a fat guy as the love interest?”

While New York City’s new ordinance will certainly alleviate a base level of the issue of discrimination based on weight and height, the problem is far too pervasive to be solved with a single piece of legislation. Size discrimination is rooted in intergenerational stigma, and that stigma is saturated throughout society as a whole. In the professional realm—ballet in particular—it’s conventional wisdom that dancers are often cut from auditions due to their body type, though not directly told such, allowing this quiet discrimination to occur unchecked. Young dancers of various heights and weights are turned away so early in life that they may never even feel the impact of this ordinance. This occurs in major ways, like being rejected from prestigious training programs or company schools, or in minor slights, like dancers having to figure out their own recital costume when those being ordered aren’t available in their size.

Much of this weeding out begins in small dance studios, where the comments of teachers can sting and prevent opportunities from reaching a more diverse pool of young artists. If local studios throughout the country refuse to embrace size inclusivity, the talent pool of professional dancers may never match the inclusive majority who have dreams of performing onstage.

Throughout my handful of years living in New York City and during frequent visits now, I’ve yet to take a dance class where I was not the only plus-size performer in the room. Are others like me not out there? Or were they turned away by the stigmas that have inundated them since childhood, as I once was and had to fight past? Now that I live in Arizona, where I kicked off my choreography career over the past year, I’ve noticed the issue is still as prevalent here as it was back in New York, though I’m taking every action within my control to fight against it.

Inclusivity is a “We’re all in this together” journey. Lawmakers are beginning to do their part—and that is commendable. But the work extends beyond that. To every small-town dance teacher who holds the hearts of hundreds of young ballerinas in their hand; to every Steps on Broadway instructor who helps to mold this generation’s top talent; to every ballet director whose obsession with clean lines and uniformity runs deep: The responsibility now lies with you—on how you speak, how you act, and how you evaluate dance.

We all play a central role in making dance size-inclusive. No change is stronger than the one we can accomplish together.

The post Will a New Law Combatting Height and Weight Discrimination Affect Hiring Practices in Dance? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The choreographer turns 67 in August, three months before his company turns 43, yet Mark Morris Dance Group has never appeared onstage at the venerable­ Manhattan venue—until now. MMDG’s first-ever Joyce engagement, August 1 to 12, features eight shorter works choreographed between 1980 and 2023, including a world premiere set to Bach’s keyboard partita no. 3 in A minor, mischievously titled A minor Dance.

A composition in seven sections from 1727, the partita is “a wonderful and thrilling piece,” Morris says. “It’s all dance rhythms, you know.” Bach is a composer whose music Morris keeps coming back to; the Joyce engagement also includes Italian Concerto (2007), for five dancers. “I could do nothing but Bach for the rest of my life,” he says. “I did a bunch of studies that were never performed, to [Bach’s] two-part inventions, which are fabulous and perfect. He took those and turned them into the incredible keyboard works that you get”—including, a few years later, six keyboard partitas.

Per tradition and MMDG’s longstanding policy, all music will be played live throughout the run, except in two cases. One is A Wooden Tree, from 2012, set to 14 songs by Scottish poet and songwriter Ivor Cutler. “It’s his voice, his arrangements, and him playing, and he’s been dead for 17 years,” Morris explains. The other exception is Castor and Pollux, last performed in 1981, which is set to a score with the same title by the late composer Harry Partch, who modified or invented dozens of unique musical instruments with names like Chromelodeon, Eucal Blossom, Mazda Marimba, and Zymo-Xyl. “They’re difficult to move and prohibitively expensive and it’s just a 16-minute piece, from a period of my life where I had to use recorded music more, because I didn’t have any money,” Morris says. “If I had another half a million dollars, I would do a whole Harry Partch show, which I would love to do at some point, so this is like a tease for that.”

Solo musicians and small groups will perform the remainder of the engagement’s scores, by Béla Bartók, Johannes Brahms, and Lou Harrison—who, like Partch, was an innovator and theorist known for utilizing non-Western musical intonation, tuning, and scales. “They’re composers whose work I love,” Morris says. A minor Dance was a great opportunity, he adds, for MMDG music director Colin Fowler “to play something exciting and virtuosic and not-that-well-known.”

Intimacy is a perennial selling point for companies appearing at The Joyce, which has just 472 seats and no orchestra pit. MMDG’s current programming echoes Paul Taylor Dance Company’s first Joyce engagement last summer, likewise a mix of premieres and rarely seen, earlier works. “One of the benefits for these larger companies is the opportunity to program pieces that might not make sense in massive houses,” says Andy Sheagren, director of marketing at The Joyce.

Smaller houses also make audience behavior harder to ignore. “Everyone has very short attention spans. No one can stay off their phones,” Morris says. “Neither of those things is new, of course, but they haven’t improved” since the pandemic. “Now, people aren’t used to talking to each other directly. And everything is more expensive and everything is less convenient. So we’re very delighted when people buy tickets and come see our shows.”

Not that the pandemic or its ripple effects have slowed Morris down. In fact, he’s been choreographing overtime to build a repository of Dances for the Future—new works the company won’t present until after his death. He says that he’s finished “about three” such “death dances” so far, though “I’ll start more than one at a time and work on them periodically, between other things,” he adds. “Sometimes I start one and then drop it if nothing is happening, if I end up not liking the music as much, or if something else comes up. That happens.”

Both choreographing and attending performances are more enjoyable than touring, Morris says, as long as an artist intends to share more than just their personal story. “A good show has to be given, to be proffered, to the watcher, to the listener—that’s what it’s for. If you want it to be about you, that’s great, and if people are interested in you, all the better. But, personally, I’m skeptical of self-expression, of journaling, in the theater. I don’t even have to like it for it to be a really good show. I just have to recognize, somehow, that it’s communicative and that it works.”

The post Mark Morris Dance Group Makes Its Debut at New York City Mainstay The Joyce Theater appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Moore is one of the many choreographers working in film who’ve been shut out of membership to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the honorary trade organization for film professionals that presents the prestigious Academy Awards. In fact, out of AMPAS’ more than 10,000 members, as of this spring there was only a single choreographer: Vincent Paterson, who is known for his choreography for movies like The Birdcage and Evita and who has been a member since 2001. (Though Debbie Allen, Adam Shankman, and Rob Marshall are members of AMPAS, Allen is a member as an actor and the other two are members as directors, not choreographers.)

This spring, AMPAS announced the creation of a new branch that could be a step towards including more choreographers in the organization—and, perhaps eventually, a Best Choreography category. Unlike directors, music artists, writers, and other film creatives who each have their own designated branch, the few choreographers allowed entry in the Academy over the years have historically been members-at-large, a hodge-podge group consisting of professionals who didn’t fit into any of the existing 17 branches. Now, the new Production and Technology branch will give these former members-at-large, including choreographers, a home, albeit one that includes many disparate types of film professionals, like stunt coordinators, preservation and restoration specialists, and script supervisors. 

It’s somewhat unclear whether the new branch will pave the way for more choreographers in AMPAS or is just business as usual with a new name. (The Academy could not be reached for comment.) But for dancer and choreographer Claire Elizabeth Ross, who founded the popular Instagram account @creditthecreator, there’s hope in even the small semantic shift from a cate­gory of professionals who “don’t fit” elsewhere to the new branch where choreographers are explicitly named as potential members. “It’s saying that choreographers do fit, and we do belong, and we are important within the making of a motion picture,” says Ross. Notably, commercial dance legend Fatima Robinson was invited to join the new branch at the end of June.

Does this mean a Best Choreography category is imminent? Paterson, who, along with McDonald Selznick Associates co-founder and agent Julie McDonald, has been advocating for such a category for years, says he and McDonald were told by Academy leadership that getting more choreographers into the organization would be the first step to begin a conversation about an award. But while Paterson is hopeful, he sees the new branch as an attempt to organize the logistically messy members-at-large designation rather than an intentional step towards including more choreographers. He expects choreographers who apply will still face significant barriers: Eligible applicants must be sponsored by two current members from any branch (members may sponsor only one applicant per year), and applications are reviewed and voted on by elected members of the Board of Governors. Without other choreographers to sponsor and advocate for their peers, and with the many other better-represented film professions in the new branch vying for a limited number of spots, choreographer
applicants will have an uphill battle. 

“What’s not going to change is the need for all of us as choreographers to come together as a collective and keep advocating for us to be represented within the Academy,” says Ross. “Yes, now we have a space. But within that space, we still need to make sure our voices are being heard, because this is a massive industry, and it’s also a massive branch. I don’t think this is a win yet, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.” 

The post What Does a New Branch of the Film Academy Mean for Hollywood Choreographers? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Comings & Goings

Brandon Ragland has been appointed artistic director of Dayton Ballet and the affiliated Dayton Ballet School, succeeding Karen Russo Burke on August 1.

Following the retirement of sjDANCEco co-artistic director and founder Gary Masters, former co-artistic director Maria Basile has been named sole artistic director.

Robert Curran has stepped down as artistic director of Louisville Ballet. Former artistic director Bruce Simpson and associate artistic director Helen Starr are serving as interim artistic advisors while the search for a replacement is underway.

Celia Fushille will retire from her post as artistic director of Smuin Contemporary Ballet in June 2024. She will be succeeded by Amy Seiwert, who joins as associate artistic director in August.

Christopher Anderson will step down as artistic director of Alberta Ballet at the end of 2023.

Natasha R. Moreland Spears has been named co-executive director of the International Association of Blacks in Dance, alongside previously announced co-executive director Omar Ingram, following the departure of former president and CEO Denise Saunders Thompson.

Boston Ballet executive director Meredith “Max” Hodges will depart to join The Shed as chief executive officer in October.

Marianna Tcherkassky has retired as rehearsal director at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.

At The Royal Ballet, Isabella Gasparini has been promoted to first soloist, Mica Bradbury, Hannah Grennell, Sae Maeda, Joonhyuk Jun, and Taisuke Nakao to soloist.

Sarasota Ballet principal Danielle Brown has retired.

Awards & Honors

2023 Princess Grace Awards, which include a $15,000 unrestricted grant, have been awarded to Alexandria Best, Mark Caserta, Naomi Funaki, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, Madison Olguin, and Andrew Robare. Honoraria, which include a $1,500 unrestricted grant, have been awarded to Emily Adams and Emani Drake. Nancy Bannon and Marjani Forté-Saunders received Special Project Awards, while Chanel DaSilva and James Gregg received Works in Progress–Residency Awards.

Virginia Johnson will receive the 2023 Bessie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance and Michele Byrd-McPhee the award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance at the New York Dance and Performance Awards (“The Bessies”) ceremony on August 4.

Washington Performing Arts awarded 2023 Pola Nirenska Awards to Ralph Glenmore (Outstanding Achievements in Dance, which includes a $5,000 prize) and George Jackson (Lifetime Achievement in Dance).

Deborah Goffe received a 2023 Rebecca Blunk Fund Award, which comes with a $5,000 unrestricted grant, from New England Foundation for the Arts.

The post News of Note: What You Might Have Missed in July 2023 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Maria Majors, Kelly Ging, and Tommy Wasiuta of STL Rhythm Collaborative opened the show with Wasiuta’s playful Three to Get Ready. Mikaela Santos followed with a masterful rendition of a variation from Petipa’s Le Talisman, and both Dominic Moore-Dunson and Andrew McShea performed world-premiere solos: In his eyes and You, a body, respectively. Madeline Maxine Gorman and Ashton Edwards each presented dance on video (Between Myself and Bright Young Things). The first-act performers then joined editor in chief Caitlin Sims onstage for a brief panel to discuss their pathways to dance, repertoire, and career aspirations.

Several “25 to Watch” artists from the previous 22 years that the feature story has been a popular part of the magazine attended the evening as audience members; they stood for a moment of recognition and applause.

After a brief intermission, Quinn Starner began round two with an homage to her competition-dance days in Jason Parsons’ Into the Storm. Tendayi Kuumba followed with a performance of her BlackBird solo. Erin Casale danced a cheerful variation from Leonid Lavrovsky’s Walpurgisnacht; Dandara Veiga brought heat and articulation in her premiere of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Novo Começo; and Jordan Demetrius Lloyd presented his introspective Black Cherry. Finally, Cameron Catazaro and Ashley Knox closed out the night’s dance portion with an emotional performance of Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain, followed by a second panel discussion.

Thank you to everyone who played a role in this inaugural 25 to Watch Live! event, from the incredible dancers to the audience members and sponsors, Bloch and the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance.

The post Reflecting on 25 to Watch Live! 2023: Moving, and Being Moved appeared first on Dance Magazine.

What does celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip hop mean to you?

Kwikstep: It’s great that everybody’s coming together to celebrate a movement that’s so young but has already made a global impact. I look at this 50th anniversary as a reset, because hip-hop culture has been saturated with pop culture and consumerism. But true hip-hop culture comes from the people before anything else, and from the four basic elements: the deejay, the break dancer, the graffiti artist, and the emcee. 

You’re involved in several events centering on the anniversary this year. Tell us about the dance battle you’re planning at Lincoln Center. 

Rokafella: On August 9th, we’ll be hosting an all-styles dance battle with a deejay and eight top competitors. We’re kicking off the event by screening bits of the newly released oral histories of street and club dance masters from the New York Public Library’s dance division. We’ll have some of the dance masters there so they can answer questions. We hope audiences walk away understanding that these are people whose unique trajectories helped to inform what street and
hip-hop dance is.

Kwikstep: For Afro-diasporic people, word of mouth is key to passing along our history. We’re trying to get all of hip hop’s pioneers into the catalogs as soon as possible. Their interviewers come from the same neighborhoods, so we can capture their lingo and body language. When people celebrate 200 years of hip hop someday, they’ll get to reference what was happening in the beginning by the people who were actually there. 

What’s the inspiration behind your duet at Jacob’s Pillow this summer?

Kwikstep: The duet is a culmination of our work that helped shape hip-hop theater in New York City. I’m definitely part of its early lineage, from the very first hip-hop musical, So, What Happens Now?, to our nonprofit, Full Circle Productions, which we founded in 1992.

Rokafella: After we got a few commissions, Full Circle really started to jump in and do more evening-length programs. We’ll be extracting from that ensemble work as well as previous duets to create a funny, lighthearted story.

Kwikstep: The first drama is always in the streets, so what you see onstage is the same kind of energy that you see in a cypher. It’s a different type of stage, but we make sure the audience is feeling where this was born, and to not compromise the culture. 

How do you strike a balance between staying true to hip hop’s roots and also sharing it on a global stage? 

Rokafella: Ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games, we received a grant from the Ford Foundation to uplift breaking culture. To us, that means fortifying local communities, raising awareness that there’s a generational community in breaking, both elders and young people coming in. 

Kwikstep: Breaking in the Olympics is going to bring a particular attention to what breaking is. But the Summer Olympics happen every four years—hip hop happens every day. And it’s defined by a collective consciousness made up of crews and communities. It’s not just about moves, but a movement of the people, and we understand that hip hop has the power to move and heal people all over the world. 

How do you hope hip hop will evolve in the next 50 years? 

Kwikstep: I would like the most famous and money-making element of hip hop, emceeing or rapping, to embrace all the other elements, and continue forward together. Hip hop is a movement that’s in constant flux according to the needs of the people. Right now, people need hip hop in its original state.

Rokafella: I’m hoping there can be more of a global connectivity, and recognizing the lineage of hip hop worldwide. I also want more young people to understand that there can be other career paths that branch out of your dance or lyricism or artwork: professors, historians, playwrights, and more. You can still stay true to your area of creativity and have other doors open to you. I hope that people can look at my journey and see that I didn’t just dance. 

The post How Husband-and-Wife Duo Kwikstep and Rokafella Are Celebrating Hip Hop’s 50th Anniversary appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Sparkling at 60

LONDON  The Australian Ballet embarks on its first international tour since before the pandemic, bringing George Balanchine’s Jewels to the Royal Opera House Aug. 2–5. The company’s return to the venue after a 35-year absence is part of its 60th-anniversary celebrations, and will close with a one-night anniversary gala on Aug. 6 featuring works from choreographers ranging from Rudolf Nureyev and Yuri Possokhov to Pam Tanowitz and Alice Topp. australianballet.com.au.

A School Dance, a DeLorean, and Doc Brown

NEW YORK CITY  After winning the Olivier Award for Best New Musical, Back to the Future flies from the West End to Broadway. The adaptation of the 1985 film follows the adventures of Marty McFly (Broadway’s Almost Famous breakout star Casey Likes) as he accidentally goes back to 1955 in a DeLorean that can travel through time and the hijinks that ensue as he tries to save the inventor, Doc Brown (Tony winner Roger Bart), make sure his parents fall in love, and return to the future. On the Town director John Rando is at the helm, with choreography by Chris Bailey. Opening night is slated for Aug. 3. backtothefuturemusical.com.

Fresh Air

NEW YORK CITY  Battery Dance Festival presents more than two dozen artists and companies in live and livestreamed performances at Rockefeller Park. Among the offerings during this year’s iteration of New York City’s longest-running free public dance festival are the premieres of Jerron Herman’s Lax, billed as “a punk concert in a sleep store”; Trainor Dance Inc.’s Under Pressure, set to a remix of Freddie Mercury and David Bowie’s a capella version of the titular song; and a new solo from Curaçao’s Reuel Rogers, Power. U.S. and local debuts abound, while a special Turn of the Century Dance Pioneers evening features works by Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn as well as Lori Bellilove’s Duncan-inspired Tribute to Ukraine and Jody Sperling’s climate-engaged, Loïe Fuller–styled solo, American Elm. Aug. 12–18. batterydance.org.

Beach Birds in Their Natural Habitat

NEW YORK CITY  What if Merce Cunningham’s 1991 Beach Birds were performed on an actual beach? Patricia Lent and Rashaun Mitchell stage the naturalistic work, one of Cunningham’s early experiments with LifeForms software as a choreographic tool, for this year’s iteration of Beach Sessions Dance Series, which returns to Rockaway Beach for a day of free performances on Aug. 26. In addition, choreographer Sarah Michelson, who began making dances in New York City in the early ‘90s, will premiere a choreographic response to the work, contemplating her personal connection to Beach Birds, Cunningham, and his legacy. beachsessionsdanceseries.com.

Living Water

HUDSON, NY  Dancemakers Jodi Melnick and Maya Lee-Parritz join forces in Água Viva, a duet inspired by the novel of the same name by Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Published in English translation under the title The Stream of Life, the novel has an unconventional structure, a fluid, directionless monologue that eschews plot and named characters. Melnick and Lee-Parritz expand upon its musings on virtuosity, sexuality, and the spectacular in their new work, premiering Aug. 26–27 at Hudson Hall. hudsonhall.org.

Late Summer Gatherings in San Francisco

ODC Theater plays host to two festivals this month.

State of Play

Guest curated by Maurya Kerr and Leyya Mona Tawil, ODC’s signature summer festival returns with, in the curators’ words, “dance that sits and stares back at you.” International collective Tableau Stations premieres the evening-length Home Waves, about affordable housing and featuring residents of the local Mercy Housing development alongside creators Isak Immanuel, Marina Fukushima, and Surjit Nongmeikapam. Ajani Brannum’s the wasp project, a solo inspired by an African American folktale, also premieres. Kensaku Shinohara, Marissa Brown/Lone King Projects, and Yanira Castro/a canary torsi present evening-lengths; Baye & Asa, DANDY (David Rue and Randy Ford), and Jerron Herman shorter works; and Audrey Johnson, gizeh muñiz vengel, and pateldanceworks offer works in progress. Aug. 3–13. odc.dance.

FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival

Eight premieres are promised over the two weekends of this festival, kicking off with FACT/SF and Shaun Keylock Company sharing a double bill, Aug. 18–20, part of the former’s Peer Organized Reciprocal Touring program. Local choreographers Emily Hansel and Mia J. Chong, Brianna Torres, and Héctor Jaime join the mix alongside visiting dancemakers Alfonso Cervera and Taylor Donofrio for the second weekend of performances, Aug. 25–27. factsf.org.

The post 7 Shows Worth Catching Before Summer Comes to a Close appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But don’t worry: The chatbot also said that “while ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for choreographers, it should not replace the artistic intuition and expertise that come from years of training and experience.”

If it sounds like the robot doth protest too much, that may be its attempt to acknowledge a growing existential concern, as the dance world reckons with the current and possible future impacts of ever-expanding artificial-intelligence tools. These technologies are further complicating the dance world’s already-broken relationships to copyright, crediting, compensation, and consent. And, yes, they could potentially remove artists from the dancemaking process.

Even so, dance artists are increasingly inspired by the generative potential of AI, whether as a choreographic tool, a topic to probe onstage, or an entryway into the broader intersection of dance and technology. And it isn’t just dance artists who are using AI in their practice. The big data companies that wield AI are also eager to “use” dancers, as their tech trolls the internet for movement data and seeks to profit from dance artists’ embodied knowledge. The trend has the potential to create a whole new world of lucrative and fascinating opportunities for dance artists—or to unleash a movement-data-harvesting free-for-all.

“On the one hand, I’m very excited for dancers and choreographers who use these tools to generate creative outputs that couldn’t be imagined years ago,” says Sydney Skybetter, choreographer and founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces. “On the other hand, I’m concerned for how these technologies leverage data extracted from our bodies.”

AI as Dance Partner

The first time choreographer and roboticist Catie Cuan danced with an artificially intelligent robot—a machine that moves using AI—“it felt as though I had exported a part of myself into this agent,” she says. “And then I could experience it back and move alongside it, which felt as though I had collapsed space and time, and could externalize my physical being and then re-engage with it.”

Other choreographers who’ve partnered with an AI technology report feeling similarly expanded, if not in body then in movement possibility. In Valencia James’ AI_am project, for instance, James improvised with an AI-powered computer, as represented by an avatar projected onstage, that she and her team had “taught” to dance using motion-capture technology. “It really extended my idea of what dance could be,” James says. “We didn’t give it any real-world physics, so it could do movements that would not be humanly possible, but I found that was really inspiring and generative to explore what it means to move in the style of impossibility.”

Pontus Lidberg experienced this on a large scale with his 2020 Centaur, for Danish Dance Theatre, which used several AI modules to create a voiced avatar that gave nine dancers onstage instructions that varied in each performance. He found that the algorithms, which were based on elements including game design, planetary movements, and swarm technology, were adept at creating complex compositions in unexpected ways.

Exploring AI Onstage

Other artists are finding meaning in dancing not necessarily with AI but about AI, forcing audiences to reckon with its ever-expanding role in our lives.

In Katherine Longstreth’s in-process work, the last dance picture show, the choreographer gets in an argument with an AI about creativity and originality. But it isn’t really an AI—it’s a scripted voiceover: Longstreth sees the technology as a potential threat. “If the tentacles of AI reach into the corporeal data of performing artists,” says Longstreth, “the implications will be catastrophic for dancers.”

She’s particularly interested in debunking the idea, prevalent in tech spaces, that AIs don’t copy artists’ work but simply use it for training. “This is just malarkey,” says Longstreth. “Your training defines who you are—I believe that to be true for humans and for these machines. It’s baloney to say that they can train on your artwork, and yet not have your artwork show up in their creative output.”

Daniel Gwirtzman metaphorically embodies artificial intelligence himself in e-Motion, which was co-conceived and written by Saviana Stanescu and explores the relationship between a neuroscientist and her creature, and was inspired by conversations with ChatGPT. Though Gwirtzman considers ChatGPT a collaborator on e-Motion, he can’t envision artificial intelligence independently authoring true choreography. “It’s hard to imagine taking out the self, the scrutiny, the deliberation, and calling it a piece of choreography,” he says.

Mining Movement Data

In the past several years, both Facebook and Stanford University have launched artificially intelligent movement-generation tools—almost like ChatGPT, but for dance. These tools encapsulate many of the questions that will determine whether artificial intelligence empowers or erases dance artists. How were these AIs trained, and with whose movement? Were dance artists involved in their development? Will they actually be useful for dance artists? And do they have the potential to replace real choreographic labor?

As for the first question—how AIs are “trained” with movement data—choreographer and artist-engineer Laurel Lawson says that dance artists are already being taken advantage of, whether or not they realize it yet. Some technology companies, she says, are harvesting movement data directly from videos online,­ without consent, credit, or compensation. And while other big-data companies may hire dancers for a project, Lawson worries that these artists don’t know how the movement they provide may be used later on. “It is critical that artists contractually specify and have knowledge and control about how their movement might be applied, recombined, or used in training data in the future,” she says.

The training of AIs can pose other ethical issues, which is why Kate Sicchio, assistant professor of Dance and Media Technologies at Virginia Commonwealth University, always creates her own data sets rather than using existing training d­ata.­ “If I have a data set that I just got off the internet, whose body is in there?” she says. “Did they sign up for this?” She cites ­an­ instance when an AI that could create “hip-hop” dances had been trained solely on data from Japan. “It’s this African diasporic dance form,” she says. “How do we protect people’s identity and cultural knowledge when it starts to come down to numbers?”

Choreographer Irina Demina is confronting this question head-on with her KLOF. cyberographies of folk, a piece that asks an AI that’s been trained in 26 folk dances to create a new, “universal” folk dance. She says she trusts technology to perform this specific task more than she would a human, and yet it is practically impossible to create an AI devoid of human­ bias. AIs constantly make value judgments about whose bodies matter based on the data they’re trained on, points out Skybetter. And the very nature of AI—which takes that data and looks for patterns—has the potential to erase bodies that fall outside what it views as the norm.

Looking to the Future

There will likely always be human artistic labor involved at the intersection of AI and dance, even if the source of that labor is erased. But Cuan hopes that the growth of AI in dance spaces will create new opportunities for choreographers, rather than displacing them.

“I have this crazy job right now where I’m a robot choreographer,” she says. “But I think there’s going to be thousands more. We’re going to have choreographers who make gesture interfaces, spatial-audio choreographers who figure out how audio is going to track around the room, metaverse choreographers. What I’m advocating for is that the tide by which those technologies are moving can be paired with the movement of choreographic knowledge such that the two move forward together.”

This means dance artists need to be invited to the table—as true collaborators, not just as “decoration,” as Sicchio puts it. But it also means that artists themselves must “consider the notion that choreographic knowledge has so much to offer outside of the proscenium,” says Cuan. “I think choreographers have an amazing role to play in that world.”

The post How are Dance Artists Using AI—and What Could the Technology Mean for the Industry? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Here Lies Love, the immersive, groundbreaking musical from David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, is transforming the Broadway Theatre into a discotheque, making audience members both clubgoers—dancing encouraged—and active participants in the story of the former First Lady and President, whose rise to power and epic fall from it are told through disco-inspired songs and Byrne’s signature wit.

Choreographing both the performers and the audience members—who continuously move throughout the space and occasionally learn a few moves themselves—is a big job, but one that Annie-B Parson is ready for. “It’s not intimidating,” says the choreographer, who has worked with Byrne for over a decade, including on his American Utopia. “My experience with audiences is that they do very well with whatever you give them if you’re clear.”

Though Here Lies Love has had four runs in the past decade—two at The Public Theater, where it premiered in 2013, one in London, and one in Seattle—none were at the scale of the Broadway production, which has been designed to put even more audience members up close and personal on the dance floor. It also has additional seating options for a more traditional theatrical experience—an added challenge for Parson and director Alex Timbers. “We’ve always been very aware of what it looks like from different angles,” says Parson. “Alex is very good at understanding how the space can come alive from all these different points of observation.”

Though Parson researched disco when creating the movement for the show, and built movement from her years of working with Byrne,­ Here Lies Love’s dance vocabulary brings a distinctly postmodern aesthetic to the Broadway stage, not dissimilar from the movement Parson has created for many years with her company, Big Dance Theater. “Bringing that to Broadway?” says Parson. “Well, we’ll see how they like it.”

Dance Magazine’s Lauren Wingenroth spoke to Annie-B Parson as Here Lies Love was readying for Broadway, and Rachel Papo photographed the first day of dance rehearsals in May.

How does it feel to be reimmersing yourself in the world of Here Lies Love after all these years?

It’s been a dream of ours to bring it back at a larger scale with a larger audience. I always have felt that you need to really make this piece as dynamic as it can be; you need sort of a crisis of people on the dance floor. And because we’ve always been in smaller venues, we were limited to 100 or so people. Now, the relationship between the audience and the piece will feel perfect. I’m very interested in co-proximate, co-temporal bodies in space.

It will feel different for the bodies that are watching, too. It’s just crazy to see that many people doing what they’re told. The motif of the disco becomes more intense with more people. In the past, we’ve had very few people in the observer seats, but now I think it’s just as many as on the floor.

What else can we expect to see that will be different in the Broadway production?

It’s essentially the same show but updated, since it’s now and not then politically. Because of Bongbong [the current President of the Philippines and the son of Imelda and Ferdinand], we’re looking to highlight the complicity of the U.S. government with the dictatorship in the Philippines. It’s not one of those pieces that I did it and it’s over. It’s about Filipino history. So it’s never going to be over.

Are there any challenges you’re anticipating as you bring the show to Broadway?

Well, we have a new cast, essentially—not 100 percent, but pretty much—so of course that always feels unknown, like “How do these people execute my movement?” And, in this very small period of time, how do I transmit the tonality and the muscularity of my particular movement vocabulary? It will be unfamiliar to them because they come from a different tradition.

I think of Broadway as very wet material. I think of it as hot and I think of David’s early material as cool. So when you’re dealing with cool–dry instead of hot–wet, it’s very different for a dancer. We’re talking about tonality, muscularity, isolation. It’s not just musical theater dancers, it would be any dancer that wasn’t trained in more postmodern tradition.

Having said that, I’ve had very good luck with the casts that I’ve worked with on this show. So I wouldn’t say I’m worried about it.

We don’t see immersive shows on Broadway often. Are you grappling with any expectations of what a Broadway show is supposed to look like?

Look, I just did American Utopia. And that’s the only Broadway thing I’ve done. I don’t have any knowledge of Broadway, I don’t tend to see Broadway shows. And aesthetically I’m very, very far away from what you would think of as a Broadway choreographer. So I don’t go in with any knowledge of what that audience is like.

The audience for American Utopia was there to see David Byrne. And they saw him, and it was his vision. So I essentially feel like it’s his vision again, and this is just as amazing. What we’re bringing musically is as groundbreaking as Bernstein when he was on Broadway; as Cole Porter when he was on Broadway; as George Gershwin when he was on Broadway. [Byrne] is accepting no tropes—no Broadway tropes are in that show. I don’t know if that’s conscious or unconscious. He’s just telling a story through his music. And to me, it will change how people think about music on Broadway, as much as Gershwin changed it and Porter changed it and Bernstein changed it. I think it will feel super-exciting to hear storytelling in a different musical voice.

What is the storytelling role of dance in the show?

Well, story is not my middle name; I am pretty narratively challenged. I would say more that I’m creating a movement logic. I think in any piece that is made by a choreographer who’s not in a tradition of musical theater, you teach the audience the vocabulary over time. So when they first see the material, it’s not going to be familiar. There’s a diagonal slant on what’s happening in the song. So I can’t say that there’s much storytelling—I would say there’s more music-telling.

You’ve made so much more work with David since Here Lies Love first premiered. How has your collaboration grown since then?

I feel like we’ve almost created a folk dance of our own, in that there’s a world of movement that has amassed coming from my body, into the music, into the dancers. It’s like one long piece for me. And I had a lot of cues from him about what he likes and where he’s coming from through references that we share. We both really love ceremony—we share videos back and forth of coronations across the world, these ancient rituals. So that is the way I understand what interests him.

So now that you have this larger pool of references and material, will there be more layers as you build the movement? Or are you going to be true to the original movement?

I want to do more layers, but I think they really want me to keep it the same. I’m not the lead author of the piece, Alex and David are. I love being in that position. I consider myself in service to David’s music, and to the director Alex Timbers. It’s a really interesting position, because choreographers, we love limits. And then when I’m in my own room, I have the opportunity to make anything I want, and have the burden and joy of being the sole author.

Anything else you want to mention?

This time, the thing that seems very, very cool to me is that we have Filipino producers. And they are brilliant. I don’t use that word loosely. That I have conversations with Jose [Antonio] Vargas is just insane. He’s so incredible and generous and deep. I just finished his book, Dear America, and I really recommend it. I think about all the things I could have done in my life, and it seems insane that I ended up doing this. How would I have ever met someone like Jose? He’s in a completely different universe. Those interactions are really deepening for me and anything that deepens for me deepens for the dancers through osmosis.

The post Behind the Scenes with Choreographer Annie-B Parson as <i>Here Lies Love</i> Moves to Broadway appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Copeland plays Rose, a dance teacher and waitress supporting her mother, Gloria (former Dance Theatre of Harlem and Complexions Contemporary Ballet member Christina Johnson), who lives with dementia. The two struggle to keep their home in a rapidly gentrifying Oakland, California. Rose befriends Sterling (Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s Babatunji Johnson), a local man who renews her hope for the future of her community and its culture. Throughout the film, Rose and Sterling largely interact through contemporary dance, with Sterling also communicating through turf dance, a street style that originated in Oakland.

Flower is mostly nonverbal, creating an inclusive story ballet in film form. It took root years ago, when executive producer Nelson George—who directed the documentary about Copeland, A Ballerina’s Tale—encouraged Copeland to further explore acting after seeing her perform La Bayadère in California. Copeland and Fayyaz, Flower’s producer, continued to develop the idea. “We took the ball and ran with creating a new form of storytelling for film,” Copeland tells Pointe. “That has been like our baby that we’ve birthed during the pandemic, but with a lot of intention.” The only dialogue comes from unhoused individuals, meant to give voice to the voiceless.

“I feel that the work I’m doing off the stage is equally as important as being a presence on the stage,” says Copeland. “This is the direction that dance and ballet should be moving in—telling these types of stories that will invite different communities and make them feel seen and heard.”

Most of Flower’s creative team have ties to Oakland. Copeland was inspired by the city, her husband’s hometown, for its history of activism and the way its youth culture uses art as a tool for social justice. “It was important for the creatives to have a real say in cooperation with the project,” she says.

The film features choreography by Alonzo King and creative pair Rich + Tone Talauega, and music composed by Raphael Saadiq. Copeland began working with King on the movement approximately a month and a half before filming started. “We just went into the studio and started creating,” she says. “He would ask me, ‘What do you think your character would be saying in this moment?’ Then, we would create based off of that, and we gave Rich + Tone the space and freedom to do what they do, like with conversations about who Babatunji Johnson’s character was.” Copeland wanted the choreography to feel fully relatable and human. “I have such a sensitivity to different genres of dance coming together,” she says. “It can work so beautifully and organically, and feel like a conversation of two different languages.”

At times, Rose escapes into a dreamlike state. In one scene, inspired by the 1983 hit Flashdance, she warms up and freestyles before teaching a ballet class. She then appears to be transported to the stage of Segerstrom Center for the Arts, highlighting the comfort and freedom she finds in movement. The addition of Segerstrom was originally unplanned. “It was just supposed to be in the studio, in my element, and then I loved the idea of this transformation,” Copeland says.

The walls of Rose’s studio are decorated with illustrations of trailblazing dancers by Salena Barnes from Copeland’s book, Black Ballerinas: My Journey to Our Legacy. “We wanted it to feel authentic to this character and her connection to the Black community and Black dance community,” says Copeland.

Copeland reflects on Flower as her first performance since the pandemic and motherhood. “Even with the surgeries and injuries I’ve had, I’ve never taken that much time off from dance, so my body was in a very different state,” she says. During the biggest dance scene—a pas de deux between Rose and Sterling—she was pregnant. “To have that experience within this new experience of being a producer and in this type of film, it felt good. Now, stepping back and watching it, I feel like there are so many layers to my intentions, but also what I was feeling in those moments.”

During a talkback with CNN’s Sara Sidner following the Lincoln Center screening, Copeland and Fayyaz revealed plans to make Flower a series of shorts, with each focusing on an issue specific to a different city. “We were able to provide jobs to people in the area, especially during a time when people weren’t getting as much work and productions were closed down,” Fayyaz said of the Oakland installment. “We want to continue doing that in other communities across the country.”

The post Misty Copeland’s New Film, <i>Flower</i>, Explores Inequity and Celebrates Community appeared first on Dance Magazine.