Stills from Ghostcatching by by Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar

Engage with The Dance Center!

Welcome to The Dance Center’s Community Outreach and Education page
devoted to programs and resources related to the Season for you to engage in throughout the year!
 

2009 – 2010 Body Electric: Science, Technology, & Dance



As contemporary dance advances in the 20th century, numerous choreographers are working with various new technologies and scientific ideas in the development and presentation of their work.  Whether commenting on and experimenting with artificial intelligence and interactive technologies, or making use of motion capture and related animation techniques, dance artists are establishing new protocols for embodying ideas. In tune with this pulse, The Dance Center’s upcoming season will present dance works that have provocatively woven science and technology into their process and manifestation.
 
From electrical impulses within the body to sparks of light that project images of ourselves in alternate forms, technology and movement continue to drive excavations and realizations of what human being means. The Community Outreach and Education (COE) program will mine interrelationships of technology and dance throughout the season with programs ranging from dance classes and film screenings to an exhibition in February of 2010 that will examine identity in relation to the technologized body.
 

Upcoming Events

  

movementPROCESS Workshops

Saturdays, 11am - 1pm

The Dance Center's Theater, 1306 S. Michigan Avenue

Free

Experience elements of each of The Dance Center’s presenting artists’ process in these free Saturday movement workshops.  From principles of Cloud Gate’s Chinese physical training, Koosil-ja’s live processing, and Troika Ranch’s collaborative digital domain, to Wayne McGregor|Random Dance’s neuroscientific methods, these workshops will expose some of the elements at the core of each company’s movement development process.
(Participants should have some movement background.)

January 23     Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan
February 6     Koosil-ja/danceKUMIKO
March 6       Troika Ranch
March 20    Wayne McGregor | Random Dance

Digital Incarnate: The Body, Identity, and Interactive Media

February 8 - April 2, 2010

The Arcade Gallery, 618 S. Michigan Ave, 2nd Floor

This multimedia exhibition explores the moving body in relation to technology by featuring pioneering new media works by artists in or connected to The Dance Center’s 2009-2010 season. Whether commenting on and experimenting with artificial intelligence, interactive technologies, or making use of motion capture and related animation techniques, dance and media artists are using technology to explore the body in dynamic reflection and interaction with its digitized other.  In the wake and crest of such advances, notions of identity dissolve and emerge in algorithmic and projected forms.

Presented by: The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago; Department of Exhibition and Performance Spaces; and Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media.