Limit(less)
Limit(less) is a 50 minutes dance performance featuring Japanese Butoh dancer Azumaru and iiwa KUKA robot. It explores complex interactions between the two based on the idea that the movement needs to be re-designed to accommodate non-human partners. It is a strongly physical duet where the bodies of iiwa and Azumaru are entangled in their expression of one another. They dance their existence that is created from their collisions, improvisation and dependencies.
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Butoh’s grotesque, absurdity and androgyne meet 7 degrees freedom iiwa who has no social background and moves in alien way to that of an every-day life. iiwa does not try to imitate Azumaru; it is allowed to remain what it is - a machine - yet it gains a new stage life accompanied by the human dancer whose slow, hyper-controlled motion is interrupted by convulsive gestures required by the presence of iiwa.
Notions such as null space motion, ownership of agency and embodiment are equal topics of the performance. “Disjointed” bodies appear and disappear on stage, suspending the audience’s preconceptions about the robot versus human and allowing them to experience the unique movement in itself.
Limit(less) treats technology not as an unfailing and unconstrained instrument but rather attends to its relational dynamics with the human which produce contingency. It is this contingency that perceptually and embodily re-tunes us to the modern world where artificial agents are more and more common.
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Director & choreographer: Karolina Bieszczad-Stie
Dancers: Azumaru and iiwa Kuka
Programmer: Mathias H. Arbo
Music: Simen Korsmo Robertsen
Lighting design: Stein Stie
Production assistant: Aleksandra Piotrowska
Collaborators: KUKA, Kuben yrkesarena, The Norwegian Industrial Workers Museum
Photos: Magne Risnes
Premiere: 18th June at Vemork in Rjukan
Additional performances: 26th at Høymagasinet in Oslo
Funded by:
Kulturrådet, Fond for lyd og bilde, Det norske komponistfond, FFUK, Oslo Kommune, Sasakawa Foundation, Danse- og teatersentrum, Kultur- og likestillingsdepartementet, Kuka