Dancing the digital age: a survey of the new technologies in the choreographic process

This article considers fifty-eight selected dance works created during the time period of 2000-2018. In doing so the work of renown artists Wayne McGregor, Garry Stewart, Dawn Stopiello and Bill T. Jones have been used as case studies to highlight how the eminence of these choreographers has engaged dance as a meeting point and merging point for humanity and ‘New technology’. The article reviews the impact of new technologies as an essential tool (Brown, 2007, Cunningham et al., 1998) in the creative processes of dance and exploration of the moving-body. Innovative technologies in the 21st Century have offered choreographers new capacities for the creation of movement. These explorations into the performance space advance insights into broader questions of the human body at the intersection of arts and science. The choreographers’ exploration of the dancing form cultivates questions about how the human body extends, begins, ends and is present (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, 1987). As the digital age proposes new ways to (re)imagine the communication and impact of the human body we suggest these artistic collaborations also offer insights into commonalities and places of exchange across notions of art ‘v’ science. These choreographers inter-disciplinary artistic endeavors, into how the moving body transacts and is harnessed as a mode of expression reveal deeper possibilities of the ontology of the lived-experience