Dance-Theatre performance explores relationships with AI

The Cherry Arts and Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company  present “e-Motion,” a program-length dance from May 26 to June 4, 2023 at The Cherry Artspace in Ithaca and everywhere online. 

Gwirtzman is an award-winning choreographer and Saviana Stanescu is an award-winning playwright. “e-Motion” is their collaboration that “explores artificial intelligence, neuroscience and what it means to be human in a digital age.” The performance is described as 45 minutes of dance and text which bring Gwirtzman and Stanescu’s story to life. The score is a mixture of text and previously unheard music composed by the late Jeff Story, the Company’s longtime musical collaborator who passed away unexpectedly in April 2022. 

“[Jeff] was a longtime collaborator of the Company and we worked for over 20 years together, so to be able to use some music that’s never been heard before, especially around the Company’s 25 anniversary, it’s really special,” Gwirtzman said. “That’s one of the beautiful things about art and music, we may lose the composer but we keep them through their work and friendships.” 

The narrative, performed by Gwirtzman and Company dancer Sarah Hillmon, follows the presentation of the AI creature, for scholarly and public consumption. The protagonist, Ava, has worked for decades to arrive at this moment. Experiments and demonstrations are given. Stanescu and Gwirtzman liken the narrative to that of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” the story of creator and creature.

“At what point is the relationship no longer conducted by the neuroscientist and an AI is seemingly conscious?” Gwirtzman said.  “What is consciousness when we discuss AI? What is emotion and what it means to feel? These are all things the piece explores through the characters.”

Stanescu added that in many ways it is a story about the future and the present. When she and Gwirtman started creating the piece, Chat GPT and AI generated content was relatively new and not widely examined. However, there are now seminars, programming courses, and Senate discussions about AI technology. Stanescu and Gwirtzman said this performance is unexpectedly timely in that way. 

ChatGPT was used in the initial stages of script creation and research, but was lacking something important. 

“The process of working on e-Motion with Daniel Gwirtzman has been unique because it’s led to the creation of a dance theatre piece, a hybrid that lives at the intersection of dance, theatre, visual installations, human-centered design, neuroscience, and computer science. When we started talking about this project, ChatGPT was not something we had access to. The research I was doing at that time was mostly connected to the neuroscience of emotions,” Stanescu added. “When ChatGPT became accessible, I started to chat every day with this OpenAI product invented by an Eastern-European immigrant like myself, Andrej Karpathy. I asked ChatGPT many questions connected to the story Daniel and I had conceived for e-Motion, and I had the AI generate hundreds of pages that gave us insights into how this language model “thinks” and creates text.”

After some time, she decided to put Chat GPT aside for a moment to focus on infusing human creativity back into the draft. However, the performance will incorporate Chat GPT with audience interaction so that they have a chance to see how the technology works and ask questions. 

“Recent advancements in neuroscience and generative AI have made me obsess over the ethical aspects of the interaction between humans and (AI) machines,” Stanescu said. “I’ve been trying to write dramatic texts that address these issues and make people aware of the wide range of implications regarding human-AI connectivity and relationships. Of course, many people are doing the same thing in other fields.

An emphasis of both creators was that this is an accessible show for anyone who wants to observe.

“The audience will be taking things in through the auditory senses allowing this multidimensional experience which is important to us as artists,” Gwirtzman said. “In this dance company we operate with a mission that says everyone can dance. We want people to think about what they’ve seen without being confused. We’re interested in bringing audiences on that journey.”

“There’s lots of humor in the piece. The super timely topic of human-AI relationships, fears and joys, is explored in an entertaining and playful way,” Stanescu said

Gwirtzman and Stanescu are excited to share this co-created performance with the Ithaca community and broader worldwide audience. It is the culmination of years of hard work and friendship between the two artists.

Tickets for in-person performances are $35 for adults, $25 for seniors, $15 for 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.