Digital Dance: The Effects of Interaction between New Technologies and Dance Performance

Since the end of the 20th century, a growing number of dance artists are integrating digital technologies into their artistic productions. This practice raises the question of the human body's compatibility with New Technologies, as the computational calculation in bits and bytes appears dichotomic to a dancer's flesh and bones. How can dance survive in the post-modern era, and how can physical and virtual realities overcome their sharp boundaries in the context of performance?Which effects does the choreo-technical relation between body and machine have on dance art and its aesthetics? In this book, author Verena Anker analyses the phenomenon of digital dance in the light of body-machine interaction. After a historic overview of the use of technologies in dance art, the work presents different examples of contemporary multimedia performance and detects their effects on the art of human movement and its concept of embodiment. This book is directed towards academics and students in the fields of media science and philosophy, theatre and performance studies and will equally be of interest to those who are actively involved in digital performance.

Verena Anker, MA, studied Media Culture at the universities of Nancy II (France) and Maastricht (the Netherlands). She is currently involved as a PhD researcher and junior teacher at Maastricht University.Title