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Japanese Dance Company Choreographs Performance With Drones

Daito Manabe's drone-aided collaboration with Japanese dance troupe Eleven Play brings a new meaning to "rise of the machines."

Today, in "Drone-Augmented Amazingness," Japanese dance troupe Eleven Play have teamed up with artist, hacker, and all-around iconoclast Daito Manabe to create a performance that brings the term, "rise of the machines" to literal new heights.

Featuring three dancers, three quadcopter drones adorned with pyramids, and a projection-mapped backdrop, the resulting recital inside Tokyo's Spiral Hall is at once as awe-inspiring as it is urgent. The dancers pray to the drones and are preyed on by them, as if they were sky lanterns and silent death, spectres on the ever-encroaching horizon. By the end of the performance, when the drones have wholly replaced the dancers on stage, an eerie echo resounds with foreboding: we're in control of our drones… for now.

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Below, looming, looping GIFs created by Prosthetic Knowledge, from Eleven Play & Daito Manabe's drone performance:

h/t ProstheticKnowledge

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