Babyface
Wellington 2020
The People Movers / RAD Lab
An interactive performance using dance and robotics that imagines a winged, femme cyborg who was designed to be perfect. Integrating breath and robotic angel wings, this work allows audience members to physically step inside of ideas around innocence, servitude, cuteness, and spectacle. They also get to interact with robots.
The People Movers x The RAD Lab brings together a project-based dance company and an interdisciplinary research group bridging the areas of robotics, high-level control, movement representation, HRI, and dance. This collaboration is comprised of an evolving collective of artists, engineers, dancers, and scientists using movement, design and machinery to create innovative installations and performances. Babyface, which is comprised of unique choreography, costuming, set design and machine prototype, was created by Artist-in-residence Kate Ladenheim (Artistic Director of The People Movers), Research Technician Reika McNish, Undergraduate Researcher Wali Rizvi, Composer and Sound Engineer Myles Avery, and RAD Lab Director Amy LaViers.
Babyface' is a collaboration between The People Movers & The Robotics, Automation, & Dance (RAD) Lab
Dancer and machine choreographed by Kate Ladenheim with Wali Rizvi and Reika McNish
Installation and participant interactions choreographed by Kate Ladenheim and Amy LaViers
Music by Myles Avery
Supported by Wellington City Council Public Art Fund, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Central NY Community Foundation, DanceNOW NYC