Beep Boop Boop and a Root

Audience members can give a dancer four abstract directives to create movement with them. Though the audience knows which word they hit with the mouse cursor, only the dancer can hear it.

Event: https://heididuckler.org/event/ebb-flow-exposition-park/

Bernice Wang & Gurmukhi Bevli  | “Beep Boop Boop and a Root”

Concept and Choreography by: Gurmukhi Bevli & Bernice Wang

Performers: Gurmukhi Bevli & Bernice Wang

Website: https://www.gurmukhibevli.com/  | https://bern.wang/ 

“Beep Boop Boop, and a Root” combines improvisational practices and audience input in a gamified performance. An audience member through the provided computer interface gives a dancer audio inputs. This dancer responds to four possible directives: layer, disrupt, level, and discard. Another dancer emerges from the tree roots in response. The two hold a physical conversation, with one acting as a conduit for the audience. In doing so, the bodies are metaphorized as land, and physicalize their relationship with humanity by emphasizing their engagement with (or against) individual directives. Observers are subsequently implicated in altering the contours of the moving body, while having collective restrictions imposed upon their interactivity.