SWDA

6 Degrees of Freedom is an evening-length dance theater work by Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts. The work premiered at ODC Theater in San Francisco Dec. 2017. This video contains short excerpts from the slightly over an hour long piece. The basic premise of the work is that it has been created by an artificially intelligent system attempting to figure out what a dance-theater show should look like. Created by Sheldon Smith and Lisa Wymore Additional creative contributions from our performers Stephen Buescher, James Graham and Rami Margron

This is an unedited excerpt from our improvised work, Zero Return. The recording is from the AMID Festival that happened in Chicago at Links Hall in January 2016. The dance unfolds over the course of 45 minutes as a sort of game that responds to commands from a computerized system. The performers are continuously asked to either repeat themselves or move on and erase the past. Small human moments are amplified through repetition as the performers negotiate a world in which personal agency is increasingly disrupted by technology.

Performers Stephen Beuscher, Lisa Wymore and Sheldon Smith. This is a section of a new work that premieres Dec. 2017 at ODC theater called Six Degrees of Freedom. Recorded at Grey Area June 2016.

Endless Gestures of Goodwill is a two-channel algorithmically driven video installation comprised of 250 separate video clips. Custom software continuously re-edits the dance into ever changing configurations. The work is intended to suggest a kind of folk dance for the 21st century in which simple steps meet technology to display a never ending offering for humanity. The work is made out of 15 distinct movements that are designed to link to any of the other movements such that an endlessly changing dance can be constructed by randomly choosing linkup points.

These excerpts give a pretty good sense of what the piece was like. Created by Sheldon Smith and Lisa Wymore Performed by: Christine Bonansea Sheldon Smith Janine Trinidad Andrew Ward Lisa Wymore Alex Zendian