Dance Technology and Circulations of the Social, Version 2.0

Thursday, April 21, Reception at 6:30 pm
Friday, April 22, All-day Events, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm
Saturday, April 23, All-day Events, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm
Location: MIT Media Lab, 6th floor, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge (Building E14)
*This event is free of charge and open to the public. No registration required.
Program: Click here for the program of events

In recent years, technological innovations have given rise to a new field, dance technology. Populated by artist-practitioners, technologists, and theorists, this new area encompasses performance, research and development of video game technologies, motion capture experimentation, and dance for the camera. For some time, work in dance technologies has advanced without a recognizable critical dialogue in the United States. This began to change in October 2009, when the World Performance Project at Yale, in collaboration with SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology in residence at MIT, convened an international cohort of artists and scholars for a one-day meeting at Yale.  That event, “Emergent Global Corporealities: Dance Technologies and Circulations of the Social,” brought artistic creation, comparative media theory, and emergent technologies together with considerations of the social and corporeal.

This group reconvenes at MIT in April with additional participants for Version 2.0. “Dance Technologies and Circulations of the Social @ MIT” brings a dozen researchers to MIT to present their original media-focused research. The two-day symposium includes various readings, demonstrations, and small-scale performances, culminating in an anthology of writings to be edited by the conference conveners.

The symposium conveners are Thomas F. DeFrantz, Professor, Music and Theater Arts at MIT and Harmony Bench, Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University.

Click here for more information about the presenters.

Confirmed Participants Include:
Johannes Birringer, Chair in Performance Technologies, Brunel University
Melissa Blanco Borelli, Lecturer in Dance and Film Studies, University of Surrey
Maaike Bleeker, Chair, Performance Studies, University of Utrecht
Ian Condry, Associate Professor, MIT
Scott deLahunta, Independent Artist, Berlin
Simon Ellis, Independent Artist, London
Jason Farman, Assistant Professor, Washington State University
Susan Kozel, Professor, University of Malmo
Petra Kuppers, Associate Professor, University of Michigan
Nick Monfort, Associate Professor MIT
Chris Salter, Associate Professor, Concordia University
Marlon Barrios Solano, Independent Researcher, Dresden
Jaime del Val, Independent Artist, Barcelona
Maria X (Maria Chatzichristodoulou), Lecturer, University of Hull

This event is presented in conjunction with the Boston Cyber Arts Festival.

THOMAS DEFRANTZ WEBSITE

Thomas DeFrantz, Professor of Music and Theater Arts Organizer of Dance Technology and Circulations of the Social April 22 and 23, 2011A writer, director and dancer, Thomas DeFranz is Professor of Music and Theater Arts at MIT and artistic director of MIT’s SLIPPAGE: a multidisciplinary arts collective that stages alternative histories of race, sexuality, gender, performance, and technology. He is the author of the award-winning Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance and of Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture. His creative work includes Monk’s Mood: A Performance Meditation on Thelonious Monk, a solo performance piece that marries tap dance to digital technology, as well as arts-in-education projects, such as choreography for Paul Robeson, All-American, a new play for children written by Ossie Davis, and Border Crossing for Ballet Hispanico that toured nationally. He also served as dramaturge and librettist for the Donald Byrd/Spectrum Dance Theater production of Sleeping Beauty, which was cited by the New York Times as one of the year’s best dance events.