Ugo Dehaes / LIMP

[LIMP will also be performed during the Future Generations Conference on March 19, but is only available for people with a ticket to the conference. More information via this link]

About the performance

Within his Forced Labor cycle, choreographer Ugo Dehaes has been exploring for several years how to make dance with robots. In the interactive installation Arena (2020), he lets the audience manipulate and judge robots, teaching them to dance independently. In the performance Simple Machines (2021), he breeds and trains organic robots until they can take over the roles of dancer and choreographer.

In LIMP (2024), the third part of his cycle, Dehaes returns to his fascination with the human body. This time he starts from the collaboration between humans and technology. Unlike the dystopian visions of the previous parts, LIMP presents a more hopeful vision of technology.

LIMP is a duet between a one-legged dancer, the technology of robots and specially developed artificial intelligence (AI). Thanks to a high-tech, robotic foot prosthesis, a one-legged dancer is back on stage. The technology gives him the balance, mobility, strength and confidence needed to perform choreography.

The dance material arises from movements demonstrated by a self-built robot. That robot looks nothing like a human, so it requires a lot of creativity from the dancer to adapt the movements to a human body. Once the dancer has learned those moves, they are filmed and put into a computer. Specially designed artificial intelligence analyses those images, learns the style and then independently generates new pieces of choreography to be re-learned by the dancer. Similarly, Dehaes as choreographer is supported by technology and together they build the performance. We get to see an assemblage in which the relationship between robot and human is not tightly defined. In a movement language that is both robotic and human, the boundaries of dependence and support are blurred.

While LIMP explores the fascination with technology as a support system, it also raises questions about its necessity.

More info:

www.kwaadbloed.com
www.vincentcompany.be/ugodehaes
Instagram Ugo Dehaes