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Entertainment

Minimalist Dance Piece Pairs Dancer With Real-time Reactive Visuals

Forget dancing with a human, or even a robot, partnering yourself with projected visuals is the dancing of the future.

If you’ve checked out Black Swan recently, then you know that dance can be highly competitive and deeply stressful on the psyche. At least, if you’re an unstable, schizophrenic Natalie Portman. That’s not to say it’s indicative of dance and dancers in general, but still. Which is why it must be refreshing to feature in a performance all on your own. Sure, it’ll be nerve-wracking as all eyes are on you, but you won’t feel the heat of competition. Which is how the dancer Catarina Carvalho may have felt in this one woman interactive performance, choreographed by Nina Kov, scored by Paul Child, with art direction and design by interactive open source duo Hellicar & Lewis. (Interestingly, a hypnotist called Sarah Collier is also listed in the credits…)

The piece, Divide by Zero, is they say “set in an environment where connections between personal unconscious content and digital interfaces are made possible.” It’s a minimalist work with the dancer in a reactive background, starting with a white shadow that builds and morphs as she moves, changing form as the dance progresses. The performance is pared down to the bare bones essentials of two colors—black and white—and two dancers. Two? Well, kind of. Along with the physical form of the female dancer, you also have the digital display—the responsive graphics—which in effect become her partner, both mimicking and responding to her movements like any good dance partner would.