Love it or loathe it, artificial intelligence is becoming inescapable. It’s at the top of our Google searches and has become an intrinsic part of many of our working lives - controversially, some people even use AI chatbots as therapists.
Now, AI has come to the stage in a new production at Sadler’s Wells East by the Alexander Whitley Dance Company. The Rite of Spring / Mirror premieres on 18 March, and ahead of its debut, choreographer Alexander Whitley spoke to East End Review about how he pairs generative AI with traditional dance methods to create a new kind of performance.
“The bringing together of dance and technology has really been a really deep and integral part of my work for over a decade”, he tells us.
“The Rite of Spring is kind of considered to be the first work of dance”, Whitley says.
“It was created in 1913 and has been reimagined and re-explored in many different ways by choreographers over the years. It kind of occupies a really significant place in the dance canon”.
With such a rich history, choreographers are often left questioning how they can put their own stamp on the work, Whitley continues.
The choreographer has always had an interest in the evolution of digital technology and started his own practice, in part, to allow him to explore its place in dance.
“I was interested in how emerging technologies, and particularly AI, could bring a unique interpretation to [The Rite of Spring]”, he explained. “[In] how the themes inherent in the work seem relevant, in a way, to the moment we're going through now, with this paradigm shift around the emergence of AI and questions of its power to affect change in the world”.
Mirror - inspired by Shannon Vallor’s The AI Mirror and scored by composer Galya Bisengalieva - is The Rite of Spring’s counterpart. While the latter features five dancers, the former is a duet.
“Broadly speaking, both pieces incorporate the same set and technical setup”, Whitley adds.
“We're using a system of live motion capture and generative AI across the two productions.
“In Mirror, these themes around the impact of AI are explored in the context of an intimate relationship between two people; in The Rite of Spring, those themes are expanded to the community and the forces governing that community”.
Technology has fascinated Whitley since he was young. “I was always naturally drawn to and interested in technology when I was growing up”, he said.
“I think I was part of the first generation of kids to grow up with games consoles as a regular feature of their lives, their household. Computers and technology were ever-present throughout my childhood, and I guess I saw significant development in technology as I grew up.
“I think for me, there was something I was drawn to in how [technology] reflected the contemporary world I saw around me. [I had] a general curiosity around what that opened up in terms of thinking about performance in slightly different ways”.
So how does it work? “The dancers wear sensors or reflective markers on their costumes that are tracked by cameras on stage”, Whitley explains.
“It's technology that has been developed for films and video games. It's used a lot in Hollywood movies that have CGI characters.
“That means that the dancers' movement can then drive the movement of virtual characters that are seen in projections alongside them. There's only a tiny, tiny portion of the show that's based on pre-recorded information”.
What Whitley is doing is no doubt novel. But he’s very much aware of the controversy around AI and the risks its prevalence poses to the arts.
“It's a really live and sensitive conversation across the arts as to how AI is impacting various different industries”, he admits. A lot of that concern is around replacement, that people's jobs are being taken away because AI can do what humans would previously have been doing.
“Live performance, for me certainly, has always felt relatively safe from this because I think there is something you simply cannot replace when it comes to real human presence.
“Something that has always been kind of key for me in making the kind of work I make is that, in holding these two things up alongside each other in a live performance setting, it really reveals what each one is.
“It reveals elements of the human and certainly, hopefully, reminds us what communicates emotion and why human presence is a really powerful and significant thing; how technology and digital representations of the body and of movement is a fundamentally different thing”.
The Rite of Spring / Mirror
Sadler’s Wells East
101 Carpenters Rd, Stratford Cross, E20 2AR
18 - 21 March
Find out more here.
