Title: Open Rehearsal with Life Forms.
Description: On the occasion of the opening and dedication of the University of Michigan Media Union, later renamed the Duderstadt Center, I directed an open rehearsal with Life Forms for an invited audience in the new video studio. This was a demonstration of the kind of creative collaboration the Media Union wanted to showcase. Jason Marchant supplied shapes of human figures using the computer program Life Forms. These were projected onto a large video screen behind the live dancers. Then in the moment, I played with those shapes with the dancers, asking the two dancers to find ways to make the shapes travel— rolling, them, spinning them, connecting them, dancing around and through them. In doing so, we built a dance phrase as the audience watched. Not only did it demonstrate how computers might inspire dance material, but it also demystified the choreographic process.