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Bay Area dance companies Kinetech Arts (co-directed by Daiane Lopes Da Silva and Weidong Yang) and Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts (co-directed by Sheldon B. Smith and Lisa Wymore) will be in conversation talking about their years of experience working within the intersection of dance and technology. 

Kinetech Arts will share their extensive experience making experimental, community-based works that bring engineers into the same rooms as creative makers and dancers. Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts will discuss their ongoing interest in artificial intelligence and improvisation. Both dance companies are making new works for the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies to be performed from February 17–20, 2022 in The Playhouse at Zellerbach Hall.

Presented by UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. 

Kinetech Arts combines the work of dancers, scientists, and digital artists to create innovative and socially responsible performances. Each year, KA produces multiple performances and over 50 other public events, including Open Labs, Y-Exchange public talks and Dance Hack Festivals. Through these events, Kinetech Arts practices and promotes cross-pollination of different disciplines, improvisation and free flowing experimentations. Kinetech Arts residencies include Headlands Center for the Arts, Combustible at CounterPulse, Dancing Lab: Immersive Media Through Cunningham at NCCAkron, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and ODC Theatre, among others.

Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts (SWDA) is a dance/theater company led by Lisa Wymore and Sheldon Smith. SWDA’s performances are often as funny as they are physically provocative, intellectually stimulating, and deeply, beautifully human. SWDA works collaboratively with other dancers, actors, filmmakers, composers,technologists, designers, and media artists to develop uncompromisingly original work. Finished pieces always include a range of artistic modes as well as text and technological interventions. SWDA’s performance style draws from the postmodern tradition of dance making that calls for a new paradigm on the stage -- an aesthetic of everyday movement that draws on a full array of movement, gesture, form, and experimentation within a rigorous practice. Originally a Chicago-based company, SWDA moved to the Bay Area in 2004, and has been presenting work locally and nationally ever since. Smithwymore.org