Dance Engine: a mash-up of live dance, electronic music, mobile phones, and the audience.
Beginning in 2010, Dance Engine (originally referred to as Theatre Engine) explores the synthesis of dance, technology, interactive theatre, and play. The actions and choices of each participant are an integral part of the performance creating a unique and moving experience.
Dance Engine focuses on relationship building through purposeful play; utilizing cellphones to facilitate performer-to-performer, performer-to-audience, and audience-to-audience dance exchanges. The performance goal is to lead the audience to full dance participation as a community. The technology provides a communication bridge for those hesitant to engage in partner and group activities; immersing individuals in group play by stepping them through a series of interactions with the dance performers including wordplay, imitation, drumming, controlling lights, and culminating in an invitation to move.
Dance Engine begins as a game of words and ends as a dance party for all participants. From its inception, audience members have played multiple roles: they begin as observers, transform into performers, and culminate as contributing responders toward future iterations. This authorship has created high levels of participation and appreciation for dance.
National Performances
- Rose Wagner Performance Hall, Salt Lake City, UT (2019)
- Michigan State University (2014, 2015, 2016)
- National Dance Education Organization conference in Washington, D.C. (2016)
- St. Olaf College (2015)
- Brigham Young University (2015)
- ArtPrize, Grand Rapids MI (2015, 2017)
International Performances
- Dance and the Child International Festival, Adelaide Australia (2018)
- Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2015)
Project Development of Dance Engine
The research that eventually became Dance Engine initially began as an exploration into mobile applications, game development and theatre combined to create a new method for the audience to control media in theatre and therefore inter”act” with the action on stage. This project uses the creative artistry of professionals from fields as diverse as choreography and computer science. The creative team was gathered by Alison Dobbins who created the following prototype film to assist in recruiting talented collaborators.
Creative Artists on Dance Engine:
- Project Director: Alison Dobbins, Professor of Theatre at Michigan State University
- Software Developer: Dr. Charles Owen, Professor of Computer Science at Michigan State University
- Choreographer: Kori Wakamatsu, Professor of Dance at Brigham Young University
- Lighting Designer: Michael Kraczek, Associate Professor of Theatrical Design
- Composer: Bill Sallak, Associate Professor of Audio Production, University of Wisconsin – Green Bay.
- Puzzle Composer: Ashley Heska, Freelance Artist
Dancer Toss
The first performance project in the development of Dance Engine. Breaking the fourth wall, one cellphone at a time
Dancer Toss (2013), was presented in a typical performance setting where audience members remained seated. Live dancers performed a choreographed piece, then ran off and on stage in response to commands from audience cellphones. The audience then tossed an image of the dancers from phone to phone and then finally back to the stage. The results of this research were published in the International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications in a paper entitled Integrating the Audience Into a Theatre Performance Using Mobile Devices, which won second place for paper presentation at the International Conference on Advancements in Mobile Computing and Multimedia, Vienna, Austria, December 2013.
Performance Dates: April 30th and May 2nd 2013
RCAH Theatre, Michigan State University
Dancing Computer: Dance and Performance to Teach Computer Literacy
Dancing Computer is a project that explores the inverse of Dance Engine; how to use dance to teach computer literacy. Aimed at elementary age school children, students ‘dance’ computer programs, learning both dance terminology and concepts of coding such as sequencing and conditionals. Theatre is used to create a fun and engaging learning environment as children become a computer.
Dancing Computer aims to teach computer programming by teaching students first to read code before they write it. This is a revolutionary approach – the norm being to start students off in writing code. Furthermore, Dancing Computer appeals to a wide range of learning styles as the students learn through visual, verbal, and kinetic methods. It also teaches dance literacy to students through easy to understand step-by-step instructions given on a mobile device. This familiar interface makes the dancing seem less scary or foreign.
Combining computer and dance literacy brings the arts and STEM technology together and showcases the value of STEAM based learning.
- Project Director: Dr. Charles Owen, Associate Professor of Computer Science
- Co-Project Director: Alison Dobbins, Associate Professor of Theatre
- Co-Project Director: Dr. Laura Dillon, Professor of Computer Science
- Choreographer: Joni Starr, Theatre Engagement and Education Coordinator
- Choreographer: Brad Willcuts, Associate Professor of Musical Theatre
Local Performances:
- Winans Elementary School, Lansing, MI April 2015
- Brownell STEP Academy YouthQuest Program, Flint, MI May 2015
- Impression 5 Science Center, Lansing, MI Summer 2016
Dancer Computer (2017), was presented in the school gymnasium with audience seated around an 8×8 set of colored tiles. Each student was given a tablet which instructed them on where to start and each step in the code with instructions that contained direction, distance and movement prompts such as “Crab-walk Forward 3”. The results of this research was published in the International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing & Multimedia in a paper entitled Dancing Computer: Computer Literacy though Dance, August 2017.