Creating dance with bytes and pixels: technologies as mediators in digital performance rehearsals

Digital technologies are increasingly becoming part of dance performances: they for instance appear on stage in the form of virtual projections that react to a dancer’s movements, or they enable performers to control various stage effects such as light, sound and video imagery. Within this growing artistic practice, dance art and technology are however considered in problematic terms, as they are described as opposing or dominating each other. This thesis provides a more nuanced understanding of the relation between dance and digital media by analysing how digital dance is made. Following dance artists and multimedia programmers in the rehearsal space, it describes how digital media participate in dance creation, and how performers learn to dance with digital setups and integrate technological characteristics in their movements.