Tech me out on the floor... Xbox device mimics dancers’ moves for new show

Choreographer and dancer Alexander Whitley, who trained at the Royal Ballet School, has teamed up with digital artist Memo Akten for a piece at the Platform Theatre in Central St Martins next month
Light fantastic: Alexander Whitley and Natalie Allen perform Pattern Recognition. Kinect devices enable the lights to follow their movements
Hugo Glendinning
Robert Dex @RobDexES26 February 2016

Technology designed for the Xbox has been used to choreograph a new performance in which two dancers share the stage with eight beams of light mimicking their movement.

Choreographer and dancer Alexander Whitley, who trained at the Royal Ballet School, has teamed up with digital artist Memo Akten for the piece at the Platform Theatre in Central St Martins next month.

It uses Kinect devices — originally built to allow gamers to control their on-screen actions with only their body and voice — to ensure the lights follow the movements of the dancers.

'The technology opens up new possibilities for performance. What we are doing is presenting a visual landscape that couldn’t otherwise be achieved'

&#13; <p>Choreographer and dancer Alexander Whitley</p>&#13;

Whitley, who will dance with Natalie Allen, said: “The movement of these lights is driven by the movement of the dancers. We have three tracking devices on the front of the stage that send infrared light on to the stage and can see where the dancers are moving.

“The Kinects recognise the form of the body, and Memo has done all sorts of trickery to build a system that allows these lights to move in relation to how the dancers move in a whole host of different ways.

“The technology opens up new possibilities for performance. What we are doing is presenting a visual landscape that couldn’t otherwise be achieved. It means the choreographer doesn’t just think about the movement of the human body but the movement of light.”

Latest dance articles

1/9

Akten reconfigured the equipment to work on stage as part of his studies for a PhD in artificial intelligence at Goldsmiths. He said artists were increasingly adopting technology designed for the gaming industry.

“This is a new landscape. Working with these technologies is very much like cinema in the 20th century when people were just discovering the film camera, what worked and what didn’t,” he added.

The performance, Pattern Recognition, will be at Central St Martins, in King’s Cross, on April 7 and 8.

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in