“Computers are the future of dance,” proclaimed Merce Cunningham, extolling the affordances of digital technology and its evolutionary impact on the artform. Today, few can ignore the dizzying lure of AI and XR to shape new methods and modalities for choreographic activation, audience engagement, immersive learning, and performance preservation. As we continue to embrace these technological advancements, how do we reify artistic knowledge and embodied expression, as well as inculcate the values and priorities of different creative communities? This breakout group will interrogate several key provocations, drawing upon the breadth of perspectives from participants to propose new frameworks, research opportunities, and entrepreneurial pathways for artist-centered innovation. 

The session will kickstart with an examination of AI and XR from the ‘inside-out’, inviting dancers and technologists at the forefront of cross-disciplinary collaboration to share their latest project aims, challenges, skepticisms, and ambitions. Taking a broader view on the “technologizing of dance,” discussions will then focus on how the blurring of physical and virtual environments have paradigm-shifting implications for creativity, knowledge transmission, and viewer interactivity, as well as sparking contestations around access, agency, and ownership in the AI era. Finally, a blueprint will be proposed to position artists at the core of technological futurity, no longer as passive beneficiaries of computational systems, but — as Cunningham and other trailblazing dancers championed previously — active co-creators and stewards of algorithmic transformation.