12 Nov 2022 | Being Human Festival | London + Online

Global Dance Collaboration in the Metaverse
Residency showcase

Showcase 12 Nov - Documentary

Trailer

Schedule

12.40 pm GMT

Doors open
Playscape - Installation demo and participation (in-person)

1-2 pm GMT

Sufee Yama & Pichet Klunchun Dance Company (Thailand)

Ghrāṇa - Vijñāna

A Thai contemporary remote performance that allows the audience to access the performers' internal space to witness memories and experiences that are triggered by scents, causing chaos to their mind and body. This metaverse dance experience will reveal their fight and struggle, and how the battle with themselves ends. Ghrāṇa - Vijñāna is Olfactory consciousness in buddhism.

  • Creative Technologist: Sufee Yama

    Choreography: Julaluck Eakwattanapun, Tas Chongchadklang

    Advisor: Pichet Klunchun

    Concept development: Julaluck Eakwattanapun

    Sound design: Tas Chongchadklang

    Visual design: Sufee Yama, Juliah Champion

Sumedha Bhattacharyya (India) & Joaquina Salgado (Argentina), with special participation from Brazil

Water nodes

We are water and memory is what the body carries,
Like information, like energy. 
Water is memory.

Responding to the insurmountable and collective grief, loss and the heaviness of memory experienced during the afterlife of the pandemic, Water Nodes is a hybrid immersive installation /performance (live +remote) that reminisces cross-cultural, personal, maternal histories inherited/passed on in the body. By evoking family archive photographs, spiritual and mythological references, the performance considers in the quality of water a passage for memories to flow, contain and dissipate. 

  • Choreographers: Aabshaar Wakhloo, Sumedha Bhattacharyya

    Dancers: Supriya Babbar, Andréa Moraes ( special participation from Brazil)

    Creative technologist: Joaquina Salgado

    Sound designer: Padmanabhan J

    Studio and performance space :

    Khuli Khirkee and Studio Sama New Delhi

2-2.20 pm GMT

Break
Playscape - Installation demo and participation (in-person)

2.20-3.20 pm GMT

Katie Dale-Everett (UK) & Erin Cuevas / Matt Conway (USA, California)

Playscape: How to Build A Galaxy

‘Playscape: How to Build A Galaxy’ is an immersive performance installation that combines dance, motion capture technology and projected celestial graphics to open up new possibilities for physical, social and digital connection. This work is made particularly for young people who experience anxiety in social interaction, but become motivated when engaging with technology, allowing them to discover new ways of sharing space. We welcome everyone and anyone to give it a try.

  • Artistic Director/Choreographer: Katie Dale-Everett (Katie Dale-Everett Dance)

    Creative Technologists: Erin Cuevas, Matthew Conway and Wahei Lam

    Producer: Frances Livesey

    Dancers: Ed Elford and Gabby Sanders

    Composer: Henry Bird

    Costume Design: Laura Boseley

    Dramaturg: Joumana Mourad

    Additional Funders: Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants and Creative Newhaven Grassroots Arts Award

Clarice Hilton, Neal Coghlan, Kat Hawkins and Susanna Dye in collaboration with Candoco Dance Company (UK)

Beyond T-Pose: challenging normative assumptions in MOCAP

This work-in-progress deconstructs mocap data away from its normative forms, reconstructing the data to create customised visual expressions and movement interactions. In a series of short vignettes, dancers will move together through a co-created vocabulary, pushing the boundaries of what self-representation, interaction and communication can be in the metaverse. This is the culmination of a series of workshops with Candoco dance company and associated dancers Kat Hawkins, Susannah Dye, Ted Wilkinson, Paulina Porwolik and Dermot Farrell. 

  • Technologist and researcher: Clarice Hilton

    Digital artist and technologist: Neal Coghlan

3.20-3.40 pm GMT

Break
Playscape - Installation demo and participation (in-person)

3.40-4.40 pm GMT

Ânima Cia. de Dança & Pedro Rocha (Brazil)

Weaving through the space mass

The dance performance proposes to make visible the weave of space and its manipulation by the dancers. Considering the space around the body has a certain density, when in movement, the body is not only sustained by this mass, but also manipulates and modifies it.

  • Direction: Mônica Dantas and Eva Schul

    Direction assistant: Suzi Weber

    Choreography: Eva Schul

    Dancers: Eduardo Severino and Fernanda Santos

    Music: Celau Moreira

    Creative Technologist: Pedro Rocha

    Technologist assistant: Dayandra Araújo

    Production: Andréa Moraes

Letta Shtohryn (Ukraine/Malta), with dancers in UK, New York & Malta

Lois. Monstrous encounters.

Based on factual and fictional experiences in confined underground spaces, this remote dance collaboration explores the moment when isolated life forms encounter the Primary World. The monstrous self and the monstrous others experience inner and outer transformation of their body~mind states, asking how to share experiences and relate to one another after a period of isolation? Can some experiences be explained / related to at all? And whose voices are believed and considered valid?

  • Technologist: Letta Shtohryn (Ukraine/Malta)

    Dancers:, Florinda Camilleri (Malta), Rebekah Heathcote(UK), Lena Wolfe (NYC)

Afro-Sul Grupo de Música e Dança & Pedro Rocha (Brazil) & Ainslee Robson (USA, California)

Alma Negra

Inspired by the archetypes of the female orishas Oxum, Iansã, Iemanjá and Nanã, the performance proposes an encounter between past and present, between the Pan-African roots of Afro-Sul and the experience of dance in the metaverse and confirms that the future is ancestral. Looking back is key to a better future!

  • Direction: Mônica Dantas and Iara Deodoro

    Direction assistant: Suzi Weber

    Choreography: Iara Deodoro

    Dancers: Edjana Deodoro, Taila Santos de Souza, Iara Deodoro

    Creative and Music Direction: Paulo Romeu

    Creative Technologist: Pedro Rocha and Ainslee Robson

    Technologist assistant: Dayandra Araújo

    Production: Andréa Moraes

4.40-5 pm GMT

Playscape - Installation demo and participation (in-person)

Showcase | Being Human Festival

We are delighted to invite you to our vibrant and diverse showcase of experimental work with motion capture in remote choreographic collaboration, sharing the outputs of a six-month digital dance research residency. Six teams of dancers and creative technologists - from India, Thailand, Malta, Brazil, the US, and the UK - will present unique breakthrough work in their own dance style and aesthetic.

Our AHRC-funded Goldsmiths Mocap Streamer project ‘Building an international network for virtual dance collaboration’ has six international teams in a six-month artist residency. This project showcase event will be a combination of live, immersive screen-based performance, in-person interactive performance, and interactive installation. It is presented in a hybrid in-person and live-streamed mode with remote dancers performing together within a virtual and interactive environment. Each of the six projects will be presented in different formats within an afternoon programme of presentations and conversations.

This event is part of the Being Human festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 10–19 November 2022. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. For further information please see beinghumanfestival.org.

Work is presented in partnership with project partners Target3D, Akram Khan Company, Alexander Whitley Dance Company, and Noitom Mocap.

Practical info

Date

12 November 2022, 1-5 pm GMT

In-person location

Goldsmiths University
St James Hatcham building
25 St James's, London SE14 6AD

Online

Livestream link will be provided after registration