This presentation examines random vs. intentional contributions from technology in the solo dance media performance Inside the Chain, which was presented in Russia and the USA in 2016-18. I was the dancer and choreographer in Inside the Chain. My key collaborators were software engineer Denis Perevalov and designer Anna Vozzhennikova. In the first part of the piece, the choreography is organised around technology that introduces randomness; in the second portion, the movement is improvised, and the technology is intentional and “memorises” or “archives” my movement, which is then displayed on the wall/screen with a delay. I employed random and intentional technology with the aim of using them equally in the piece, demonstrating two-way dependence between the dancer’s movement and projected images or bidirectionality of this communication. Here, the dancer’s possibilities are restricted when random technology is in use, yet the dancer maintains choice within the intentional part of the piece.
Eka Zharinova
Contemporary dance performance artist-scholar
Eka Zharinova is a contemporary dance performance artist-scholar. She holds a Ph.D. in performance studies from the University of California, Davis, and her work is centred around dance performance as research. Over the last decade, independently and in collaborations, she has been conducting practice as research on dance positioned next to a digital image, reflecting on the co-existence of the human body and the digital, among other topics.
