Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company presents e-Motion, an intermission-less program-length dance from May 26 to June 4, 2023 at The Cherry Arts, 102 Cherry Street, Ithaca, NY and everywhere online. Tickets for in-person performances are $35 adults, $25 seniors, $15 students, and livestream tickets are $20. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit thecherry.org/e-motion. The livestream will be edited in real time from a three-camera shoot, designed for the screen. A video teaser is available at https://vimeo.com/807263879.

 

Award-winning choreographer Daniel Gwirtzman collaborates with award-winning playwright Saviana Stanescu for a piece that explores artificial intelligence, neuroscience and what it means to be human in a digital age. Gwirtzman creates a physical interpretation of Stanescu's mind-bending text that brings conceptual ideas deep into the human body. The genre of the 45-minute work is dance and lives as a hybridized form, where dance meets theater. The score is primarily text, augmented by previously unheard music composed by the late Jeff Story, the Company's longtime musical collaborator who passed away unexpectedly last April.

 

The narrative, accessible piece – an extended duet performed by Gwirtzman and Company dancer Sarah Hillmon – depicts a creator and a product. Which is which? Referencing Frankenstein of Mary Shelley's imagination, this researcher is a neuroscientist and (unlike Shelley's scientist), a woman. The narrative follows the presentation of the AI creature, for scholarly and public consumption. Our protagonist has worked for decades to arrive at this moment. The big launch. Experiments and demonstrations are given. What could go wrong?

 

"e-Motion is a story very much about the future, about a future in which AI has advanced. Advanced to a way that resembles some of our fantasies and fears of the present," said Gwirtzman. "That machines will demonstrate consciousness. That machines will become capable of emoting, of feeling, of feeling emotions. And once doing so...what becomes possible?"

 

Gwirtzman's movements inform Stanescu's words. Her words inform his movements. Their process of creation is one in which multiple iterations lob back and forth in an extended sequence of volleys, translating emotions into movement, embodying emotions. The usage of Chat GPT has been a third player in the initial stages of inception.

 

About Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company

The nonprofit has been committed to education since its inception in 1998, operating with the philosophy that everyone can join the dance through multigenerational interactive programming. Incorporating dance and story into the film medium has been a consistent practice along with creating original programming for the stage. Collaborations that erode boundaries, blend genres and disciplines, take chances, involve community, promote accessibility, and celebrate performers' individuality and humanity are areas of focus. The Company's acclaimed recent creation, a digital educational resource, Dance With Us, showcases the Company's decade-long practice working in the dance for camera genre. https://dancewithus.org

 

About Daniel Gwirtzman

Daniel Gwirtzman–producer, director, educator, filmmaker and dancer–celebrates twenty-eight years as a New York choreographer and company director. His diverse repertory has earned praise for its humor, stylistic versatility, musicality, charisma and accessibility. "A flair for the entertaining," says critic Elizabeth Zimmer. "Mr. Gwirtzman does know that in dance less can be more. And that's a good thing for any choreographer to know" writes The New York Times. The New Yorker describes him as a choreographer of "high spirits and skill."

 

For the New York City-based Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, he has created more than one hundred repertory works known for their playful virtuosity, blending robust physicality with universal themes. His choreography has been performed at venues throughout the country and abroad. He has been awarded commissions, residencies and fellowships from institutions including the Joyce Theater Foundation (NY), Ucross Foundation (WY), The Studios at Key West (FL), Aktuelle Architektur der Kultur (Spain), Dora Maar House (France), The Yard (MA), Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (MA), CUNY Dance Initiative (NYC), Djerassi Resident Artists Program (CA), Sfakiotes (Greece), Gdański Festiwal Tanca (Poland), Raumars (Finland) and the Sacatar Foundation (Brazil).

 

A master teacher, Gwirtzman has worked at numerous universities. He has been a full-time faculty member at SUNY Buffalo State, Kennesaw State University, and The University of the Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at Ithaca College's newly inaugurated School of Music, Theatre, and Dance since 2019. Daniel holds degrees from The University of Michigan and The University of Wisconsin. He danced in the companies of Garth Fagan Dance and the Mark Morris Dance Group among others. He co-founded Artichoke Dance Company in 1995, which The New York Times called "a welcome addition to the New York dance scene." As a dancer he has been described as "a willowy John Travolta, sensual, playful, a rag doll, unusually supple, and one who moves like the wind."

 

About Saviana Stanescu

Saviana Stanescu is a Romanian-born award-winning playwright and scholar, winner of New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Script, UNITER Best Romanian Play of the Year, Samuel French OOB Festival, Marulic Prize for Best European Radio drama, etc. Saviana's creative work has been widely presented internationally and in the US. Recent productions include Bee Trapped Inside the Window with HartBeat Ensemble, What Happens Next at Cherry Artspace, For a Barbarian Woman at Fordham/EST in NYC, Aliens with extraordinary skills at Women's Project, Bechnyaat Hudson Theatre in LA, Waxing West at La MaMa Theatre, Suspendida and Vicious Dogs on Premises (with Witness Relocation) at Ontological Theatre, Polanski Polanski and Aurolac Blues at HERE Arts Center, The E-Dating Project at Strasberg Institute for Theatre&Film, and the site-specific I want what you have at the World Financial Center. Saviana's plays have received readings and workshops at The Lark, Long Wharf Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, New York Stage&Film, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Playwrights' Foundation, Traveling Jewish Theatre, Immigrants Theatre Project, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, Origin Theatre Company, PS122, HERE, etc. Aliens with extraordinary skills(Inmigrantes con Habilidades Extraordinarias) and Final Countdown (Cuenta Regresiva) had a long run in Mexico City at Teatro La Capilla, Teatro El Milagro and Foro La Gruta in 2010-2012. "Bucharest Underground" won the 2007 Marulic Prize for Best European Radio-Drama. In Stockholm, Sweden, Saviana's play White Embers, a Samuel French OOB festival winner, was in the TOP 3 of Best Plays in 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saviana_St%C4%83nescu.

 

About Sarah Hillmon

In addition to working with DGDC since before the pandemic, Sarah was a member of Lucinda Childs Dance Company, where she toured internationally performing classic works from 2012-2018. She was on the world tour of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson' opera, Einstein on the Beach, with choreography by Childs, for three years.

 

About The Cherry Arts Inc.

The Cherry Arts Inc. expands the possibilities of live performance by bringing artists and audiences together across boundaries of language, artistic discipline, and form. We host works in the waterfront Cherry Artspace in Ithaca, and elsewhere. The primary focus of our support is the Cherry Artists' Collective, a self-governing ensemble of professional artists who create new works of performance that are radically local, radically international, and form innovative.