Huang Yi & KUKA
Taiwan
Huang Yi & KUKA
No late seating: Please allow extra travel time, as we are unable to offer late seating for this performance.
Event Attributes
Dancer, choreographer, inventor, and videographer Huang Yi’s pioneering work is steeped in his fascination with the indivisible relationship between humans and our machine counterparts.
His intimate choreographic creations with KUKA, an industrial robot, reveal a deep connectedness to our technological world that is both physically tender and emotionally resonant.
As the machine world becomes ever more embedded in our lives, Huang Yi asks us to reflect on what it means to be human when hardware becomes body and software becomes soul.
“Dancing face to face with a robot is like looking at my own face in a mirror…I think I have found the key to spin human emotions into robots.”
Marketing support for this performance comes from the Taipei Economic & Cultural Office in New York.
Engagement events
Engagement at The Clarice is characterized by facilitated audience interactions with artists, scholars and community leaders that are focused on process and research rather than product and performance:
- Huang Yi and technical director Yen-Ku led School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance students in a dance composition class.
- Maryland Robotics Center, home of 19 robotics labs, hosted Huang as robotics students demonstrated their own projects.
- College of Arts and Humanities Associate Dean Sheri Parks interviewed Huang Yi for the WORLDWISE Arts & Humanities Dean’s Lecture Series.
- A Creative Dialogue ArtistTalk and a short performance by Huang Yi were held, plus a Q&A with Professor S.K. Gupta of Maryland Robotics Center.
- A student matinee performance and talk-back with Huang Yi and KUKA brought 130 area K-12 students to The Clarice.
Connect with Huang Yi & KUKA on social media!
Video of Huang Yi & KUKA performing
Review by The Washington Post
The resident artist at Taiwan’s National Theater and Concert Hall uses an industrial robot as a mirror of his own longing in “Huang Yi & KUKA,” an hour-long piece he performed this weekend at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. But there are still some bugs in his creation.
— SARAH L. KAUFMAN, The Washington Post, September 26, 2015
Review by The Diamondback
The multi-sequenced choreography lasted about an hour, with no intermission. The music, which only played through about half of the show, was accompanied by the mechanical noise of the robot, meant to symbolize harmony. KUKA was actually strapped to the floor, so the movement it performed was with the arm of the machine, capable of moving in a strikingly similar way to the human body.
— MIRANDA JACKSON, The Diamondback, September 27, 2015