DANCE PERFORMANCES
Dance performance was one of the earliest contexts in which LAb[au] examined the emerging aesthetic of the digital age. Following the Bauhaus search for an aesthetic adequate to the industrial age—through Oskar Schlemmer’s investigation of body and space in dance and Walter Gropius’s Total Theatre in architecture—the stage once again became a singular site where new relations emerging through computational technologies could be experienced as live, embodied, and collective events. These experiments revealed performative relationships that later informed the studio’s generative art, responsive environments, and choreography of space.
2007–2001 (selection)
MAN IN E.SPACE
Inspired by Oskar Schlemmer’s diagram Man in Space, the performance explores how the relationship between body and space extends into digital space. Starting with the dancers’ bodies on stage, motion tracking gradually expands their movements into spatial images and real-time surround sound. As the dancers leave the central stage, they turn the cameras towards the screens, producing a feedback loop. Set in motion by human action but no longer controlled by it, the system performs an unpredictable ending—continuing indefinitely or collapsing into the blue screen of a system crash.
en 3+4 jeu x 3
The title encodes twenty-one possible constellations of stage, performers and audience, questioning representability and narration. Audience interaction can end or reconfigure the performance at any moment, causing each iteration to rewrite itself. The resulting hypertext is issued as a flyer, serving both as a trace of the performance and as the starting point for the next. What is at stake—l’enjeu—is representability itself, far beyond the stage.
16.10.2007–19.10.2007 : Man in e.space
Dans en Vol, 6th Biennale
Wolubilis, Brussels, Belgium
21.09.2007 : Man in e.space
TodaysArt Festival
City Hall Atrium, The Hague, The Netherlands
08.02.2007 : Man in e.space
New Territories Festival
Glasgow, United Kingdom
09.05.2006–10.05.2006 : Man in e.space
Elektra Festival
Usine C, Montréal, Canada
25.02.2006–26.02.2006 : Man in e.space
Rendez-vous Danse d’Arcadi
La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, France
24.11.2005–25.11.2005 : Man in e.space
Le Carré des Jalles, residency
Bordeaux, France
29.05.2005 : Man in e.space
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
11.05.2005 : Man in e.space
Opening performance for Nicolas Schöffer's exhibition
Espace EDF Electra, Paris, France
24.11.2004 : D.O.T.N.A.N.A.
FILE Festival
São Paulo, Brazil
08.05.2004 : D.O.T.N.A.N.A.
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
30.01.2004 : en3+4jeu x 3
TILT Festival
El Mediator, Perpignan, France
12.10.2003–13.10.2003 : en3+4jeu x 3
Urban Lab
Bauhaus Dessau, Germany
24.03.2003 : en3+4jeu x 3
Big Bang Festival
Théâtre, Avignon, France
25.09.2002 : en3+4jeu x 3
Villette Emergences Festival
Maison de la Villette, Paris, France
hisTHORy, digital choreography
An online navigator created for the Belgian dance company THOR, based on the compression of video sequences into single composite images. These motion maps allowed visitors to reconstruct each choreography through navigation, transforming the images into scrollable videos articulated by an interactive timeline. Inspired by Étienne-Jules Marey's chronophotographic studies, the project translated dance into a navigable visual score, creating a choreographic experience within the web browser.
2002–2016 · hisTHORy
www.thor.be
2002 : Awarded the Special Prize for New Online Technologies at the Grand Prix International Vidéo Danse, under the patronage of the International Dance Council (CID–UNESCO)