Cloud Gate Dance Theatre artistic director Cheng Tsung-lung (鄭宗龍) has been working with Japanese new media artist Daito Manabe to explore the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the dance troupe’s new work Waves (波), the choreographer said.
“The first idea about the work came at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. I felt that someone’s sneeze far away could affect how we live our life. Conflicts somewhere in the world could lead to food shortages in Africa,” Cheng told a news conference at the National Theater in Taipei on Monday.
These ideas made him wonder how the waves of energy created by a dancer’s performance on stage reach and resonate with the audience in an invisible process, a power he seeks to showcase in the new piece, he said.
Photo courtesy of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre via CNA
When contemplating how to create the show, Manabe — who Cheng has followed on Instagram since 2016 — came to mind, because of his augmented-reality design for Japan’s section of the closing ceremony at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, he said.
Cheng and Manabe met in Tokyo early last year, and in February, Manabe started recording data from dancers, such as their breathing, voices and the electric pulses of their muscles, the dance troupe said in a statement.
Manabe told the news conference that he is excited about working with Cloud Gate.
“My past choreography works involved fewer than 10 dancers. It [Waves] is like nothing I have worked on before because Cloud Gate has a lot more dancers,” he said.
Some Cloud Gate dancers said that some of the moves generated by AI are physically impossible to perform.
Manabe said that AI choreography is still in the early stages, but the process provides a peek into the future through trial and error.
“After all, what we have are programs and data. Our challenges are to make what is invisible visible,” Cheng said, adding that AI could spark new body movements for Cloud Gate dancers, who have been trained in martial arts and taichi.
In addition to the music and background videos, AI would be used to create a small part of Waves, Cheng said.
Waves, which Cheng created to mark Cloud Gate’s 50th anniversary, is to be staged at the National Theater in Taipei on Oct. 12-15, National Taichung Theater on Oct. 28-29 and the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts on Nov. 4-5.
The dance troupe began its 50th anniversary celebration with a six-city tour performing founder Lin Hwai-min’s (林懷民) 1978 piece Legacy (薪傳).
The group presented the first of two free open-air performances of Cheng’s 13 Tongues (十三聲) in Taipei over the weekend, to be followed by a second show in Taichung on Saturday, and a series of workshops around Taiwan.
After wrapping up the three-city tour of Waves, Cloud Gate is to embark on a five-week European tour with 13 Tongues in France and Spain, and Cheng’s 2019 piece Lunar Halo (毛月亮) at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre by the end of the year, its Web site says.
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