The Institute for Dance Studies presents Scripting Control: Computer Choreography and Neoliberal Performance

In this talk Eacho will share his research into early computer choreography, a part of his current book project on automatic performance. From 1964 to 1978, three artists – Jeanne Beaman, John Lansdown, and Analívia Cordeiro – gave their choreographic practices over to computer software. Their dances were the first theatrical performances scored by digital computers. Eacho will outline these figures’ forgotten histories, pieced together from their archives, and argue that they developed a neoliberal performance aesthetic. Connecting the intellectual context of midcentury cybernetics with that of neoliberal economic theory, he shows how dance was used to internalize contradictions between aleatory management and utopian imaginations of individualized freedom. He thus proposes a shift in scholarship on both digital performance and postmodern dance towards a materialist critique of the historical phase computation made possible.

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https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYqduutrjwjH9D4-01xGRoYcf3QjalCYprZ 
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