The Cherry Arts and Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company present e-Motion, a narrative dance theater piece, available in person at The Cherry Artspace and via livestream from June 2 to June 4, 2023. Designed for both a live audience and for the screen, the extended duet will be edited in real time from four-cameras, immersing a viewer intimately in the performance, anywhere in the world. The piece has been made for TV.
Tickets can be purchased at https://thecherry.org/e-motion/.
For more information on the program and to watch the e-Motion video trailer visit: https://www.dancewithus.org/e-motion.
SHOW TIMES
Friday, June 2, 7:30pm EST
Saturday, June 3, 7:30pm EST
Sunday, June 4, 2pm EST
PRESS FOR e-MOTION
“Gwirtzman's choreography is spare but rich in details, vigorous within containment ... Stanescu and Gwirtzman provide a frequently dazzling hour of questions. Embodied thought. Theatre reaching past its own boundaries. … Stanescu's text unleashes a variety of languages (including an actual recitation of coding). … What e-Motion does well is to articulate the concerns (part ethical, part dystopian) of the bond between human and AI.” – The Ithaca Times
The Ithaca Times Review: 6/1/23
Top Pick in NYC, May 23-29 and Featured Interview, The Dance Enthusiast
WHCU-FM Radio Interview with Daniel and Saviana
WKTU-FM Live Radio Interview with Daniel: The Beat of NY
Tompkins Weekly Interview with Daniel and Saviana
Award-winning choreographer Daniel Gwirtzman collaborates with award-winning playwright Saviana Stanescu for a piece that explores artificial intelligence, neuroscience and what it means to be human in a digital age. Gwirtzman creates a physical interpretation of Stanescu’s mind-bending text that brings conceptual ideas deep into the human body. The genre of the hour-long work is dance and lives as a hybridized form, where dance meets theater. The score is primarily text, augmented by previously unheard music composed by the late Jeff Story, the Company’s longtime musical collaborator who passed away unexpectedly last April.
The narrative, accessible piece – an extended duet performed by Gwirtzman and Company dancer Sarah Hillmon – depicts a creator and a product. Which is which? Referencing Frankenstein of Mary Shelley’s imagination, this researcher is a neuroscientist and (unlike Shelley’s scientist), a woman. The narrative follows the presentation of the AI creature, for scholarly and public consumption. Our protagonist has worked for decades to arrive at this moment. The big launch. Experiments and demonstrations are given. What could go wrong?
“e-Motion is a story very much about the future, about a future in which AI has advanced. Advanced to a way that resembles some of our fantasies and fears of the present,” said Gwirtzman. “That machines will demonstrate consciousness. That machines will become capable of emoting, of feeling, of feeling emotions. And once doing so…what becomes possible?”
Gwirtzman’s movements inform Stanescu’s words. Her words inform his movements. Their process of creation is one in which multiple iterations lob back and forth in an extended sequence of volleys, translating emotions into movement, embodying emotions.
ChatGPT has been used in the initial stages of script creation, with responses generated through a series of questions that will be utilized in an interactive component with the audience, even on livestream. In addition, So-Yeon Yoon, associate professor of human centered design at Cornell University works with the e-Motion team to incorporate data visualization in the work, capturing the emotions/brainwaves and manipulating them in real time to produce scenic imagery for the piece.
“We live in a time of rapid advances in AI technology, the Artificial Intelligence systems get smarter and smarter every second. But what is our responsibility as humans, as creators of AI towards our “Creature”? What are the ethical aspects of our interactions with future emotional AI? Big questions…On a lighter note: my neurons are joyously firing when I work on interdisciplinary performances. Certain neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin, invade my brain and I happily collaborate with world-class choreographers like Daniel Gwirtzman to create a unique dance-theatre piece exploring AI and the neuroscience of emotions,” says playwright Saviana Stanescu.
