The AI Project

Choreographer, improviser, and theater-maker Karen Getz developed and produced the world premiere of The A.I. Project, a text-free comic-actors' ballet that explored what it means to be human through the behaviors of artificially intelligent robots. Set in a warehouse of rejected robots and robot parts, the story follows one human and his four emotionally intelligent machines. Actors with a gift for physical comedy joined professional dancers to perform the piece. "I assumed, being a dancer," Getz wrote afterward, "that I would have a useful vocabulary to communicate with dancers, but it became obvious, early on, that I needed to develop a whole new muscle, one that was useful in communicating with an ensemble of mixed discipline artists." Getz created a movement vocabulary based on her study of cutting-edge A.I. robots and visits to Hanson Robotics in Dallas and the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh. The piece was presented with the assistance of Bristol Riverside Theatre.

To see excerpts from The A.I. Project, click here.