Saturday, sEPT 4th, 21:00 – 21:35
In the ODEON THEATRE SQUARE

Cosmogony is a live digital performance, in which virtual dancers appear in real time video-mapped on the facade of Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, being remotely motion-captured live from Cie Gilles Jobin’s studio in Geneva. 

Thanks to real-time motion capture technology the company has developed, the data of the dancer’s movement is sent through the network to be reconstructed, in real time. The real dancers connect their avatars in the 3D spaces on the screens to compose the cosmogony of a virtual world in suspension. In a sidereal space or within a virtual forest, the moving bodies of the dancers are freed from the laws of physics and offer a unique contemplative experience to the audience.

Cosmogony premiered in May 2021 at the Singapore International Festival of Arts. 

Team

Artistic Director and Choreographer: Gilles Jobin
Lead Dance Artist: Susana Panadés Diaz
Dancers: Susana Panadés Diaz, Rudi van der Merwe, József Trefeli
Soundtrack: Tar Pond
Creative director and Technologist: Camilo de Martino
Lead 3D Artist: Tristan Siodlak
Developer: Pierre-Igor Berthet
Technical director: Hugo Cahn

About CIE GILLES JOBIN (CH)

In 2016, after more than 20 years of contemporary dance creation, Cie Gilles Jobin started to explore the new digital spaces for contemporary dance with the 3D movie WOMB. Impressed by the recent progress in motion capture technology, the company embarked in the creation of digital projects in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (XR). Their first digital piece VR_I (2017), an award-winning dance piece in immersive Virtual Reality for 5 spectators, toured extensively around the world establishing a model for the diffusion of location-based dance pieces in VR.  

With Magic Windows (2019) and Dance Trail (2020) Cie Gilles Jobin explored the possibilities of augmented reality and the diffusion of digital dances into the real world through an app for smartphones. With La Comédie Virtuelle, the virtual model of a real theater in Geneva (2019) the company and its collaborators envisioned a functional virtual theater for the XXI century. Real Time (2020), a stage duo with live motion capture was a project embedding digital worlds into a stage performance. 

In March 2020, when the first lockdown kicked in, Cie Gilles Jobin decided to cancel their stage projects and go full digital, focusing on real time technology for remote collaboration and performance. They developed their own digital platform to create independent collaborations and performances, in real time, without the limits of geographical and political borders. Their technology invites any dancer under any motion capture equipment from anywhere in the world to dance together in the same 3D space accessible for a multi-user audience.

For more information about their work, please visit their website.