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

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Taiwan Dance Research Journal No.9 December, 2014. pp.109~123

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

I-Wen Chang

Doctoral Candidate, Culture and Performance Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance

University of California at Los Angeles

ABSTRACT

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 thinking1?”

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

1 The author was in the final competition of the 2012 Third Digital Art Performance Award on 6/24/2012.

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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.

Key Words: Huang Yi and Kuka, Taiwan digital performance, choreographing empathy,

Dominique Boivin’s Transports Exceptionnels, Wayne McGregor and Kim

Brandstrup’s Machina (Metamorphosis: Titian 2012)


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Introduction

In the final competition of the 2012Third Digital Art Performance Award(台北數位藝

術表演獎)2, choreographer and dancer Huang Yi(黃翊) performed a duet with an industrial

robot, “Kuka”, in front of several judges3. The piece is a conversation between a human and a

robot. After the performance, one of the judges asked: “Do you intend to talk about the

relationship between choreographers and dancers? Are you indicating that dancers are like

robots that only follow rules without thinking?” Huang answered firmly: “I don’t think

dancers are like robots.”

The judge’s question sparked a discussion among people in dance circles after the

competition. Since most of the judges in Taiwanese digital performance competitions have a

fine arts and aesthetic theories background, it is not surprising that their way of interpreting

and valuing the performance would influence the way those experiments would be conducted

by artists. In traditional Taiwanese academia, the mind, in contrast to the body, is framed as

social, ideological, sophisticated, and logical. This perspective marginalizes the body, placing

undue emphasis on the mind. Not surprisingly, dancers who use their body to perform are

considered to be “robotic,” without agency, as the previous example illustrated. However, are

dancers really robots? What is the relationship between dancers, choreographers, and viewers

in a digital art performance? How can one account for that which endures in dance? If

movement is problematically considered as ephemeral, then what leads the dancing body to

become an endless series of aesthetic considerations? Might an existing theory both

kinesthetically and conceptually answer the philosophical question of the moving body?

To answer the above questions, I want to introduce dance theory and performance

theory into the discourse of Taiwanese cultural and art criticism. The notion of the body as an

abstract text has been challenged by dance theory scholars. Dance—as a corporeal

discourse—is a unique form of culture and knowledge production that both embodies and

produces cultural meanings (Novack, 1990). Scholars have established dance as a site of

everyday political meaning making that works against a reified notion of abstract political

reality bound to governmental power (O’Shea: 2007, Savigliano: 1995, Wong, 2002). By 2 By the term digital performance, I refer to the performance that involves visual elements, as well as

experimentation with any computer technology, including robotics. 3 KUKA is a manufacturer (Keller und Knappich Augsburg Roboter GmbH) and trademark of industrial robots.


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theorizing the dancing body as a site of meaning making, these scholars challenge the

body/mind dualism, and at the same time bring insight to the discourse of the moving body.

The term corporeality refers to the knowledge system and theoretical discourse on the body.

We should keep this definition in mind, since it is crucial to realizing the meaning of the body

in relation to current experiments in digital art performance in Taiwan.

In this paper, I first trace theories from distinguished theorists on the subject of the body,

and then compare these bodily theories from the perspectives of feminist studies, performance

studies, and dance studies to free the body from its subordination to the mind. These

perspectives provide a basic understanding of the theories of the corporeal. I focus on multiple

possibilities of how theories of dance can enrich our understanding on digital performance in

Taiwan. By exploring dissonance in the relation between mind and body, I argue that dance

studies offers a new conceptual understanding of the moving body in digital performance.

Lastly, I use Susan Leigh Foster’s theory from Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in

Performance (2010) to further analyze Huang Yi’s piece and conceptualize its meaning in the

digital art era in Taiwan. I assert that Huang’s performance shows the artist’s celebratory

attitude toward the humanization of machines. I also compare Huang’s piece with two other

digital dance pieces—Dominique Boivin’s Transports Exceptionnels, and Wayne McGregor

and Kim Brandstrup’s Machina— to examine the different body in human, cyborg, and robot.

Literature Review on Corporeality and the Body

The body has remained a conceptual blind spot in both mainstream Western philosophy

and contemporary Taiwanese art theory. In Taiwan, building of theory on digital art

performance is mostly grounded on theories of aesthetics. However, Taiwanese theories of

aesthetics are largely influenced by Western theory. In Western epistemology, the Cartesian

binary system distinguishes the body as primitive, natural, biologically determined, fixed,

ahistorical, and pre-cultural, in distinction to the mind, which is framed as social, ideological,

sophisticated, and logical. This conceptual rift between body and mind marginalizes the body.

Since dance involves physical movement, it is not surprising that dance is problematically

labeled as ahistorical, mysterious, primitive, pre-cultural, and feminine by scholars and

theorists who are not familiar with dance studies. And under the influence of this

dichotomous view on mind and body, even dance studies is marginalized in academia. As a


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result, corporeal theory from the perspective of dance studies does not get the attention it

deserves in academia.

This is where my essay begins, by bringing the body back intoTaiwanese scholarship on

art and aesthetics from the perspective of dance theory. Body/mind dualism results in a lack

of theorizing bodily experience as having positive potential for agency. However, the

Cartesian body/mind dualism has been challenged by theorists, including Maurice Merleau-

Ponty, Michel Foucault, as well as Deleuze and Guattari, all of whom have rethought the

concept of the body through either philosophical or phenomenological lenses. Theorists

propose the work of corporeal inscription. These philosophers emphasize productivity of the

body, ways in which the social inscriptions of bodies produce effects of depth. However, their

discussions are based on male bodily experience, and those experiences should not be taken

for granted as universalized or generalized norms. Even so, feminism and dance theory are

both theoretically marginalized for their connection with the body. While the dichotomous

body/mind concept is challenged by feminist theories, it makes sense that dance theory also

challenges the Cartesian dualism.

Dance comes to corporeality with the new language of performativity, a term that was

created in order to rethink ideas of subjectivity, embodiment, and social identity. According to

post-structuralist philosopher Judith Butler, performativity is a repeated practice of “doing”

that suggests a “dramatic and contingent construction of meaning (Butler, 1990: 177).” The

concept of performativity is also an attempt to find a more embodied way of rethinking

relationships between determined social structures and personal agency.

However, for Butler, the body is a submissive field where performativity takes place to

reinforce compulsory heterosexuality. She sees the body as a surface on which cultural norms

are applied. As a result, Butler looks at the body simply as a social construction without

agency or resistance. Her concepts about the body are problematic because they do not

account for the meaning making process that the body can produce. On the contrary,

phenomenologist Elizabeth Grosz argues that bodies can be viewed as liberating terms of

cultural, sexual, and racial production. She disagrees with the notion of bodies as ahistorical,

pre-cultural, or natural objects. Instead, Grosz claims that bodies are not only inscribed,

marked, and engraved by social pressures external to them, but that bodies are also the

products of social constitution itself (Grosz,1994:x). Extending Butler, who treats bodily


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experience as an abstract text, Grosz provides an ontological approach that locates the

possibility for transformation within materiality, which is the lived bodily experience.

Like Grosz, philosopher Susan Bordo argues that knowledge is ‘embodied,’ produced

from a ‘standpoint,’ by a body located as a material entity among other material entities. For

her, analyzing the “definition and shaping” of the body enables us to see struggles over the

shape of power (Bordo, 1995: 17). Bordo’s work is often compared and contrasted with Judith

Butler’s theory. Butler theorizes the body as a pure text (an abstract, unkinesthetic, and

unsituated linguistic structure). On the other hand, Bordo sees the body as a shifting text, or

discursive effect. The body is fixed and has no agency, but is produced by the reiterated,

gendered act. On the contrary, Bordo questions the idea of a purely textual body. Although

Bordo does imply that the body is a text to be inscribed upon and interpreted, she also

emphasizes the materiality and locatedness of bodies within Western culture. While Grosz

and Bordo disagree with Butler’s treatment of the body as a text without agency, these

scholars do not provide a better term to replace Butler’s “performativity.”

Dance studies, a New Perspective?

I suggest that the theories from dance studies can bring a new perspective to theorizing

the body. Moreover, dance studies brings insight into the understanding of bodily practice,

which focuses on the agency of the moving body. Emphasis on the dancing body enables us

to see the bodily experience as different from abstract and submissive bodies, such as those

often seen in the digital art aesthetic domains. This emphasis on the body as a central focus

frees the body from what Butler claims as pure textual body without agency. In other words,

addressing the dancing body as a site of meaning making can challenge the body/mind

dualism, and at the same time bring insight into the discourse of agency in the moving body in

digital art performance.

Scholars have established dance as a site of everyday political meaning making that

works against a reified notion of abstract political reality bound to governmental power.

Undergirding my grasp of the dance studies framework is the assertion that dance is “a

cultural practice that embodies a broader scope of purpose and influence” (Wong, 2002: 70).

Thus, as embodied corporeality, dance situates bodies as relational, and moving within


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networks of power (Savigliano, 1995), which can reveal social values embodied in everyday

practice.

Ever since the 16th century, Western theatrical dance has moved increasingly within

mechanisms called choreography. Choreography, using Deleuze and Guattari’s term

“apparatus of capture” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987:424-73, cited from Lepecki), becomes a

core concern not only in the field of technology of the body, the mode of composition, but an

apparatus (Lepecki, 2007).In addition, performance theorist André Lepecki argues that “to

conceive choreography as an apparatus is to see it as a mechanism that simultaneously

distributes and organizes dance’s relationship to perception and signification” (Lepecki, 2007).

However, while Lepecki focuses on the ephemeral quality of performance in an always

vanishing present, his approach neglects the ways that performance endures in cultural and

individual imaginaries over time (Foster, 2011:4).

Along similar lines, Foster proposes that the term “choreography” brings agency to the

body and bodily experience in both cultural and individual aspects. Foster claims

“choreography is a set of culturally situated codes regarding gestures and movements through

which identities and social memberships are configured (Foster 1998: 4).” She argues that the

metaphor of choreography works better than “performativity” to convey the codes, traditions

and conventions people produce, as well as the enactment of gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity,

and racial or national identities.

The idea of choreography brings to light the way that dance can be read as politics.

Foster demonstrates how dance practices have been aligned with other forms of cultural and

knowledge production. Corporeality and textuality work for each other in dance practices.

Choreography, as the act of theorizing bodily identity, makes choices about who and what the

body is. By analyzing the choreography of bodily movement, the knowledge of corporeality

can produce and influence the construction of power and knowledge.

Moreover, in her book Choreographing Empathy, Foster argues that the relationship

between the dancer and the observer is highly influenced by ever-changing socio-cultural

conditions. Similar to performance theorist Diana Taylor, who proposes the term “scenarios”

that render visible power relations for any performance to create a trace whose ideological

impact can be examined and evaluated (Taylor, 2003: 142-143), Foster proposes the concept


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of “kinesthesia in performance,” where she examines historical genealogies of the terms and

concepts of choreography, kinesthesia and empathy. Through those analyses, she challenges

the assumptions of a natural or spontaneous connection between the dancing body and the

viewer’s body. She argues that those experiences are often carefully constructed and that the

“dancer’s performance draws upon and engages with prevailing senses of the body and of

subjectivity in a given historical moment (Foster, 2011:2).”

Theorizing the Body in Huang Yi and Kuka

In the piece Huang Yi and Kuka, choreographer and solo dancer Huang Yi dances with

a robot named Kuka. Huang sits down and starts to dance in a chair, and Kuka follows his

dance. The robot holds a flashlight in its arms and directs the light toward Huang. Huang then

plays with the light-filled space, indulging himself in a dance between the light beam shot

from the robot and the music. Kuka moves precisely due to its accurate auto-programming

system, representing itself as a robot with life on the stage. Even though Huang and Kuka

perform a duet, Kuka seems to be an observer as well as an active participant in the

performance. In addition, their movement, as shown in the piece, identifies and suggests the

possibility of communication between the human being and the robot.

Huang creates dance that flows smoothly through space, seemingly blending his body

into the surrounding air. Bodies, lights, and sounds deliver an abstract line of dramatic

language, allowing the dancers to open up possibilities in the audience’s perception of

physical movements and interactions with the surroundings. At the end of the piece, Huang

gets closer and closer to Kuka, and finally takes the flashlight away from the robot. This

action suggests the switching of roles played by Huang and Kuka. If the light symbolizes

power and knowledge, Huang seems to take control over the robot in this moment. On the

other hand, the moment their playfulness with each other starts also symbolizes a

collaborative exploration between the two.

Huang tries to dance with the robot and questions the distinction between the human

being and mechanism, a question reminiscent of the pioneering and influential idea of

“cyborg”—a term made famous by the philosopher Donna Haraway to describe a being with

both biological and artificial human-machine systems. In similar fashion, artist Andy Warhol


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once said “I want to be a machine. I think everybody should be a machine 4 .” Perhaps

Haraway and Warhol’s ideas also inspire artists to experiment with possible relationships

between robots and humans. As Ollivier Dynes’s book Metal and Flesh and Donna

Haraway’s famous “A Cyborg Manifesto” suggest:

We are no longer merely entangled with machines, no longer simple soldered to

their experience; we literally coevolve with them. We must now perceive of

technology and human beings as one entity. We are machines and the machine is

within us. The machine breathes. (Dynes, 2001: 32)

By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras,

theorized and fabricated as hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are

cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a

condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres

structuring any possibility of historical transformation.(Haraway, 1991: 150)

I assert that Huang’s performance is one example of fascinations associated with

machine embodiment, showing the artist’s attitude toward a distinct theme: the humanization

of machines. In Huang’s piece, the robot does not just follow Huang’s movements, but also

interacts with Huang (even though these interactions are all pre-programmed). Their moving

“bodies” in space suggest communication between the two. While one might be suspicious

that a machine could actually “dance,” I would suggest that the audience can sense the

kinesthetic dimension of the performance, and thus be able to empathize with the relationship

between the human and the robot.

Empathy as a term was first used by German aestheticians seeking to describe and

analyze the act of viewing painting and sculpture. They believed there to be a kind of physical

connection between the viewer and the art in which “the viewer’s own body would move into

and inhabit the various features of the artwork (Foster, 2011:10).” Empathy therefore

connotes the viewer’s physical responsiveness to objects. 4Andy Warhol Interview with Gene Swenson, Art News. 1963.


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Kuka in Huang’s piece is a humanized machine. Huang carefully choreographs Kuka’s

movement so that the robot moves like a human being. Kuka swirls, extends, and projects the

light toward Huang when dancing. All these movements are carefully manipulated. While

Kuka is a mechanical device, its movement resembles human movement. It is only when the

audience gains the immediate empathetic capacity(because they have an emphatic response)

that they are able to sense Kuka’s movement. Kuka’s mechanical arm projects perceived

human emotions (such as curiosity and exploration), whereas Kuka’s mechanical lower half

displays the purely kinetic repertoire of a machine. If Kuka’s lower half were only to repeat

its spiraling pattern, the robot would not resemble a living organism. In contrast, Kuka’s

upper half is a carefully crafted representation of human-like movement recognizable within

many cultures around the world. Therefore, audiences are able to read and relate to the

affections of Kuka. The ability to sense Kuka’s movement in relation to Huang's movement

gives the audience access to read Kuka as a humanized machine.

While the idea of dancing with a machine is novel to most of the Taiwanese audience,

Huang is not alone in experimenting with this concept. A number of European choreographers

have choreographed dance for large machines. For example, in 2005, French choreographer

Dominique Boivin choreographed a duet piece called Transports Exceptionnels for dancer

Philippe Priasso and a five-ton excavator. Boivin is the artistic director of the dance company

Beau Geste, a company based in Val-De-Reuil in Northern France. In this piece, Boivin uses

Western classical music that highlights the impact of the hugeness of the machine and the

space it occupies. Throughout the piece Priasso moves within the digger, climbs on, and

dangles from it. This duet, a meeting between a seemingly indestructible machine and a

comparatively fragile man, draws on the Ballet tradition of partner dance in performance.

Similar to Huang & Kuka, Transports Exceptionnels explores an unexpected moment

shared between iron and flesh. Despite similarity, distinct differences exist between the two

pieces. In Transports Exceptionnels, an invisible dancer sits in the operator’s cab of the

excavator, whereas in Huang’s piece, Kuka is an entirely pre-programmed robot. Boivin’s

piece deals with the intimacy between two individuals— the dancer and the operator inside

the excavator. This poetic pas de deux is conducted by two different people: one is a “normal”

dancer, the other is a machine. The movement dynamitic from the machine is still controlled

by the operator, and therefore becomes the extension of the operator’s body. In contrast,

Kuka’s movement in Huang’s piece, due to its pre-programmed setting, is choreographed by


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Huang. Therefore, Kuka is like the extension of Huang’s body, following Huang’s will, and

therefore Huang Yi is actually dancing with himself.

Although the two pieces are similar in format, Huang’s piece is detailed and precise,

programmed with highly organized choreography. The pieces deal with different

philosophical considerations; Huang’ piece is about how one subject (the artist) extends

himself toward another non-human mechanism, whereas Boivin’s piece is about two subjects

(artist and the machine) in dialog with each other. None of the above mentioned pieces offer

us the possible interaction of human beings dancing with a representation of artificial

intelligence as they’re not yet considered to exist within the computing community. However,

their intention and creativity do provide us an optimistic imagining of the possible future

when human and artificial intelligence coexist together peacefully. Their works offer a

different theoretical approach toward robots and human interaction in performance.

In 2012, London based choreographer Wayne McGregor and Danish choreographer

Kim Brandstrup were commissioned to create a piece called Machina with sculptor Conrad

Shawcross. Interestingly, the visual image of this piece reminds us of Huang Yi and Kuka.

This piece also deals with a huge robot (mechanical arm that projects lights) and its

interaction with dancers on stage. However, unlike Huang’s embrace of mechanical

embodiment, McGregor and Brandstrup’s version shows the fear of human encounters with

an unknown power (robot). While Kuka behaves like a friendly and curious human being

ready to explore the world, the robot in Machina is threatening and powerful.

Machina was produced as part of Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, a co-production with the

National Gallery and The Royal Ballet in the UK. The creative stimulus for this piece is three

masterpieces by the Renaissance artist Titian: Diana and Actaeon, The Death of Actaeon, and

Diana and Callisto, all of which are based on the Greek myth of Diana and Actaeon, and

recounted by Ovid in Metamorphoses. The tale recounts the unfortunate fate of a young

hunter named Actaeon, and his encounter with chaste Diana, goddess of the hunt. While

Diana is nude and taking a bath, Actaeon unwittingly stumbles upon the scene. Diana madly

splashes water upon Actaeon. He is thus transformed into a deer and loses his ability to speak.

Actaeon is then killed by his fellow hunters and his own hounds because they could not

recognize him anymore.


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In the performance, Diana is a huge robot (mechanical human-like swiveling torso) that

occupies half of the upstage area. In the opening, the dancers are barely visible on a smoky

gray stage. Only a bright point light shines behind them. The alien-looking robot, Diana,

stands aloof as dancers move through cross-currents. This gray metal robot is like a praying

mantis controlling the stage. When the dancer moves close, the Diana robot reacts wildly,

responding to the impending threat. This robot transforms Diana’s mettle (emotional) to metal

(mechanical), and her gaze and anger into a robotic metaphor–light beam shooting out in the

dark to the fellow dancers and audiences. The robot indicates an unknowable threat to human

beings.

McGregor captures actual human movements in the choreography of this robot. The

choreographers cleverly use the encounter between robot and man to indicate the meeting

between Diana and Actaeon. The robot in this piece is a mechanized human, showing the

artists’ interpretation of how powerful and threatening a non-human (goddess or robot) could

be. The choreography also represents a fear toward mechanism, cyborg, and machine.

Huang Yi and Kuka celebrates fascinations associated with machine embodiment,

whereas Machina shows fear of an unknown, non-human subject. However, in both pieces,

the movements of robots are choreographed and programmed beforehand. Although both

Huang and McGregor/Brandstrup intend to make the robot move as a human being (by

motion capture system of real humans moving), the robots are still used as tools. None of the

robots in the above mentioned pieces have artificial intelligence, therefore, all of the robots

are still under the control and command of the choreographers. The fears and celebrations

regarding those machines are manipulated carefully by the artists, and those emotional

responses are affected by how the audiences perceive or sense the moving body on stage.

Conclusion

Visual culture theorist John Berger argues that culture, knowledge, and belief systems

influence our ways of seeing (Berger, 1972). He points out that the way we see the world is

determined by what we know. Therefore, the different understanding on the discourses of

corporeality influences how we look at the body in digital performance. Similarly, in the

famous essay on “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproducibility,” Walter Benjamin

wrote:


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During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with

humanity’s entire mode of experience. The manner in which human sense

perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined

not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well. (Benjamin, 1988: 219)

While Benjamin mainly focuses on transformation from painting to film and

photography - his concept tells us that the nature of the work of art relies not just on the art

itself, but also on our perceptive-sensorial relation to it (Lepecki and Banes, 2007: 4).

Therefore, in an age of mechanical reproduction in digital performance, it is necessary to

identify how audiences sense, perceive, and empathize with the performance. This empathy,

as suggested by Foster, is never apolitical.

Foster’s theory in Choreographing Empathy provides a good tool for analyzing how

perception and sense are political. In Taiwan, government policy and government-sponsored

competition play important roles in leading the directions of Taiwanese dance trends. In

current Taiwanese digital performance discourse, dance theory is marginalized. However, by

closely analyzing the moving body and actual behaviors, dance theory opens up theoretical

possibilities. With careful concern for the body and corporeality, dance studies can bring

current Taiwanese cultural criticism and discussions to a different level. Dance theory has the

ability to enrich the current digital performance discourse in Taiwan.

In this article, I have focused on how dance acts as one of many bodily tactics for

cultivating knowledge through digital art performance. In doing so, I do not devalue other

means of theorizing the body, but rather seek to introduce a new angle on dance theory in the

Taiwanese context. I hope the paper contributes to a new performance-based perspective to

understand the aesthetic realms outside of the domains of theatrical performance, and to

further the development of Taiwanese digital dance theory.


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