Are Dancers Robots? A Theoretical Consideration of the Body between Human and Robot in Performance

10.6303/TDRJ.2014.9.5

I-Wen Chang

Huang Yi and Kuka ； Taiwan digital performance ； choreographing empathy ； Dominique Boivin's Transports Exceptionnels ； Wayne McGregor and Kim Brandstrup's Machina (Metamorphosis: Titian 2012)

台灣舞蹈研究

9期（2014 / 12 / 01）

107 - 121

英文

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on the body as a central topic of investigation, especially in the fields of Taiwanese art, performance, and cultural studies. However, the body is marginalized due to disproportionate emphasis on the mind. As a result, many scholars look at the body through the lens of visual representation and treat the body as a pure text. Not surprisingly, in the final competition of the 2012 Third Digital Art Performance Award, one judge asked the choreographer and dancer Huang Yi-who performed a duet with an industrial robot Kuka-＂Are you indicating that dancers are like robots that only follow rules without thinking?＂ This question indicates the common phenomenon of viewing the body as an abstract and unsituated linguistic structure; therefore the dancers are without agency. However, by introducing the latest corporeal theories from the discipline of dance and performance studies, I argue that scholars have produced a new perspective to the theoretical understanding of the moving body in digital performance, especially with respect to Taiwan. By analyzing Huang's piece from a dance theorist perspective and comparing Huang's piece with two other digital performances-Dominique Boivin's Transports Exceptionnels, and Wayne McGregor and Kim Brandstrup's Machina, I assert that Huang's performance is one example that celebrates fascinations associated with machine embodiment. There are three imperatives for my study: 1) to make a connection between dance studies and digital performance studies in Taiwan; 2) to clarify the corporeal experience and its significance to aesthetic studies, which has rarely been discussed in the growing scholarship of fine arts in Taiwan; 3) to understand representation of the body in digital art performance through corporeal and kinesthetic terms, which has not been fully discussed in the growing scholarship in Taiwanese performance studies.

1. (1990).Feminine, Masculine and representation.Sydney:Allen & Unwin.
2. Arendt, H.(ed.)(1988).Illuminations.New York:Schocken Books.
3. Banes, S.,Lepecki, A.(2007).The Senses in Performance.New York:Routledge.
4. Berger, J.(1972).Ways of seeing.London:British Broadcasting Corp..
5. Bordo, Susan(2004).Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.Los Angeles:University of California Press.
6. Butler, Judith(1990).Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.New York:Routledge.
7. Chang, I-Wen(2013).Dance and Technology: a New Aesthetical Trend in Taiwan.online journal CULTUREBO
8. Deleuze, Gilles,Guattari, Félix(1987).A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia.Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.
9. Dixon, Steve,Smith, Barry(2007).Digital Performance: a History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance art, and Installation.Cambridge, Mass:MIT Press.
10. Dyens, Ollivier(2001).Metal and Flesh: the Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over.Cambridge, Mass:MIT Press.
11. Foster, Susan Leigh(2011).Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance.London:Routledge.
12. Foster, Susan Leigh(1998).Choreographies of Gender.Signs,24(1),1-33.
13. Foucault, Michel(1977).Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison.New York:Pantheon Books.
14. Grosz, Elizabeth(1994).Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism.Bloomington:Indian University Press.
15. Haraway, Donna(1985).A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.Socialist Review
16. Lepecki, André(2007).Choreography as Apparatus of Capture.TDR: The Drama Review,51(2)
17. Lin, Yatin(2012).Technology and the Human Body in Performance: Taiwanese Choreographer Huang Yi's Interdisciplinary Experimental Collaborations.PSi (Performance Studies International) #18 Conference,UK:
18. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice(1962).Phenomenology of perception.New York:Humanities Press.
19. Novack, Cynthia(1990).Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture.Madison:University of Wisconsin.
20. O'shea, Janet(2007).At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage.Wesleyan.
21. Savigliano, Marta(1995).Tango and the Political Economy of Passion.Boulder:Westview Press.
22. Sparshott, Francis Edward(1988).Off the Ground: First Steps to a Philosophical Consideration of the Dance.Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press.
23. Taylor, Diana(2003).The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas.Durham:Duke University Press.
24. Wong, Yutian(2002).Towards a New Asian American Dance Theory: Locating the Dancing Asian American Body.Discourses in Dance,1(1)
25. Young, Iris Marion(1990).Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory.Bloomington:Indiana University Press.