Maze as Dance

From Maze

DANCING CODE: Reading 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 As Choreography

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. The intertwining of dance and labyrinth, of bodies moving in mazes, taking steps, making steps, are not new. Dance moved from being a sacred, ceremonial, ritual practice to becoming the secular performance we know it as today in the West. Dancers weave their steps and movements in space and through time; and in so doing they create an invisible fabric in and of space. Think of the labyrinth as a sort of mental canvas, the choreographer’s oeuvre played out on the dance floor through sequences of dancers’ steps, but also the choreographer’s multi-dimensional vision invoked, interpreted, performed by bodies in motion through space. The canvas takes shape in a topologically complex world, but one that dancers on stage, “in performance,” run through from beginning to end as though moving through a uni-cursal, fully plotted path. The labyrinth becomes multi-cursal for dancers when the plot thickens with improvisation, which often takes place during rehearsal, or, precisely, in improvisational dance. 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$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 defines a repetitive loop, read as choreography it can be translated to last the length of a full stage-performance. As choreographers, we might further pause to reflect on the pseudo-random output of the 10PRINT line. The pseudo-randomness of the code affords an aesthetic magic and surprise that similarly enhances the audience member’s experience of its choreographic output. For a dancer, 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 provides a uni-cursal path, that is a set, sequenced, step-by-step blueprint of the dancer’s footfalls. Indeed, a dancer dancing moves through any choreographed piece as through an invisible, uni-cursal labyrinth. The more improvisational the dance, the more multi-cursal the progression through space, replete with dead-ends and recursions. In classical ballet, no less than in classical music, the audience can expect certain movements, transitions, cadences, and codas. A knowledgeable dance audience member will draw a mental picture of the dancer’s circuit through the walls that circumscribe spaces, just as a Marcel Marceau described them more explicitly for his audiences. It is Marceau who educated the novice dance viewer to see the labyrinth’s walls and alleyways, windows and doorways, and movement boundaries and choices in an imaginary, multi-cursal world. All by simplifying and breaking down the meaningfulness of movement. Once a dancer captures 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10’s step-by-step agenda, the line dictates little else. Absence of other bodily instruction, or direction means it offers dancers the freedom to improvise all but the footfall movements; a dancer’s upper-body improvisation will necessarily define a more multi-cursal world that topological geometry might reflect more accurately than dance notation or a single line of code in BASIC. Knowledgeable dance audience members, then, like jazz aficionados, will recognize improvisation for what it is: a multi-cursal exploration of existing, historical, and innovative patterns in grammar and syntax of the dance idiom. Having accepted and made nearly second-nature the step-by-step strictures and structure of 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 as choreography, the dancer has earned the freedom of a flâneur to perform pseudo-randomnly (or improvise) the rest of the dance. To complete a choreographic reading of 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, one could take each token and read it choreographically, detailing in each instance what a choreographic rendering of the line might need or want to allow for as well as what the detailed choreographic reading affords choreographers and dancers.

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.

Illustrations: [I may try to find images of dance notation; if so, with rights.]

Mark's additions: Some notes:

Kern suggests that even the labyrinth of Knossos refers to, not a building, but a dance and the depiction of that dance. For evidence he turns to the Ilias and the shield of Achilles.

The legend of Theseus also includes a dance. On the way back from their mission, Theseus and the mane celebrate with dance and song on the islands. As Miller includes, "on the island of Delos they performed a peculiar dance called the GEranos, or 'Crane Dane,' in which they went through the motions of threading the Labyrinth, and...this dance was perpetuated by the natives of that island until fairly recently" (19).

Crane Dance.