Maze as Dance

Before meandering through reading code as choreography and watching its impact on how we can interpret 10PRINT, specifically, in that manner, let’s briefly cast an eye on the creative dimension of computer-enhanced choreography, for there must be no doubt about the importance of the effect of computer programming and applications on the creation of dance. Life Forms Dance Software, a product of Credo Software, was the preëminent application for animating and simulating a choreographic vision since the late 1980s. Not only was it one of the first, but it was soon put to impressive use and effect by Merce Cunningham in ''Trackers'' (1989). This software enhanced choreography as imaginative work as well as choreography as a bodily practice moving through space in myriad combinations of movement.

The history of computer-enhanced performance is amply recorded. Computer applications have afforded choreographers over the last thirty years the means of re-writing traditional ballet’s basic bodily grammar and syntax. Merce Cunningham and William Forsythe, most notably, have, as Cunningham’s collaborators, Kaiser and Eshkar, have written about him, “a lifelong interest” in figuring out “all that the body on two legs can do.” Forsythe, in the late 1980s, that is before introducing the digital into his work, was already interested in exploring what the dancing body could do when it was de-centered, that is when the center of the body-in-dance was no longer the center of gravity of classical ballet or the bodily center of dancers. Computers inevitably broadened the scope of these choreographers’ abilities to find new shapes and sequences and challenged dancers to create new movements and new vocabularies.

Merce Cunnigham’s ''BIPED'' (first performed at UC Berkeley in 1999 and six months later to great acclaim in New York City), created using Kaiser and Eshkar’s eponymous biped software, resonates as a major achievement and turning point for what interests us here: the choreographic output of software. In ''BIPED'' animations, derived from motion-capture data and projected on stage, “danced” with Cunningham’s dancers, whose pathways and movements through the stage-space were also created with the help of that software. Ironically, now, computers could be programmed to help explode gravity-defying boundaries that human body could still strive to capture and move through, if not immediately or always or, in many cases, yet ever. Not only Forsythe’s and Cunningham’s dancers, but also professional dancers everywhere, would now accomplish unexpected, aesthetically captivating revelations.

Reading 10PRINT as choreography may seem far-fetched, but that is the realm into which, as we now see, computers invite us. If bodies can move in defiance of gravity, first on the screen and sometimes in reality on stage, let us consider the output of 10PRINT.

In the case of 10PRINT, simplicity affords us a clear and straightforward example instance of reading code as choreography. First of all the line 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 reads as code, not plain English and not graphic. It can be said to read as notation, thought not, for sure, in the classic Labanotation/kinetography or Benesh method of notation (from the late 1940s). Notation in the world of dance is used both as instruction and memory, as blueprint and as record.

To think of the 10 PRINT line of code as a line of choreography affords us the opportunity to underscore some of its characteristics. It suggests that computer code, written to be interpreted by computers, may be interpreted by other means – namely, in this instance, by human beings, with unexpected, choreographic intentions and/or results. As a matter of fact, it may appear coincidental, but it is utterly convenient, to recognize in the 10PRINT line of code instructions for two feet in motion. Each foot can easily be seen in the Commodore64’s “back” and “forward” graphic slashes. The performance of these feet on the screen are the computer’s interpretation of the code, but this is code that an aerobically healthy dancer could and might well perform as well on stage – and not just because the two feet make it conveniently human.

This line of code captures other choreographic concerns. As a loop, it denotes choreographic repetition; its “loopiness,” like its bi-pedal characteristic, emerges in the work of many choreographers. The work of Pina Bausch, for example, amply demonstrates the innocence and tameness of a simple motion or step, as against the power and the violence that same motion acquires when repeated and repeated and repeated in numbers that acquire momentum before one’s very eyes. The effects in Bausch’s work, captured first visually, spill over into the audience’s full-bodied experience of physical pain and sensory re-adjustment. 10PRINT uses only two “steps” to mesmerize the viewer. The incessant hopping around on two feet that 10PRINT choreographs would not but affect audiences similarly. Repetition, in Bausch’s work, typically starts as sort of boringly mesmerizing but may be experienced, in the end, painfully boring, assaulting, and even traumatizing. Quite a bit can be learned here, not least how the human body in motion affords audiences new imaginaries and the intertwining of old histories with new and novel creative futures.

The 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 line encodes a loop that the kernel and computer iterate and re-iterate as motion-on-the-screen. The on-going cascade is linearly printed, acknowledging the movement-in-time effect that all dances also perform. Because 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 defines a repetitive loop, read as choreography it can be translated to last the length of a full stage-performance. As choreographers, we might further pause to reflect on the pseudo-random output of the 10PRINT line. The pseudo-randomness of the code affords an aesthetic magic and surprise that similarly enhances the audience member’s experience of its choreographic output.

The computer interprets the 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 line of BASIC and dancer(s) will perform the choreography it offers them. Once rendered or performed, both the code or choreography and their respective performances are game for critics to assess their value, their quality, and their failures. Much as 10PRINT’s screen output is a visual image we choose to see as a maze, a labyrinth, a woven fabric, or whatever else, we can choose to read 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 as choreography and decide what it reveals to us artistically, aesthetically, physically, and philosophically.