At 2024 Sundance, two documentaries about artificial intelligence premiered that raised tantalizing questions about whether in some way or another, could we really live forever. In Love Machina, director Peter Sillen highlighted a head-and-shoulders robotic bust which unquestionably does not resemble the flesh-and-blood version of the individual upon which it was modeled but it also has gradually become quite the mind-boggling computer simulation. Citing a couple’s love story as the motivation for creating it, Sillen said in an interview with The Utah Review, “Love can be different things to different people and everybody has their own definition. But, it’s the most powerful human emotion. It opens up the conversation about their idea of creating something to continue their love forever but also then this idea and question of whether or not a robot could ever experience human emotion. It’s fascinating material to explore.”
The second documentary, Eternal You, directed by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck, swung from poignant empathy for those seeking closure in their grief to alarm about the potentially frightening psychological ramifications of engaging with sophisticated computer simulations and avatars which convince people that it is possible to ‘keep the dead alive.’ Riesewieck mentioned in an interview with The Utah Review, “It’s very understandable that if you didn’t get the chance to properly say good-bye to somebody and you deeply long for having this one conversation you didn’t get to have, you would try it out. And, I mean, why not?” Likewise, Block explained that “all of us, in a way, suffer from a kind of transcendental homelessness.” He added, “This creates a big void and it is difficult to deal with the finitude of our lives and those of our loved ones who have passed. … We don’t have to accept the fact that someone is gone any longer and we can just keep on talking to them. We believe that it is not only a minority who can fall for that. Actually all of us could be in a situation where we would love to try that out.”
While not directly inspired by these two documentaries, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s recent world premiere From Code to Universe was an exceptionally moving collaborative masterpiece of dance theater that comprehensively captured the range of emotional dynamics explored in stories of love, memory and loss. As a valedictory creative statement by Daniel Charon, who is stepping down after 12 years as the company’s artistic director, it was an astute, lucid, prepossessing expression of preserving authentically human consciousness and memory in an age where it can be reprogrammed and manipulated. The question remains: Do you think you could live forever?
Throughout his tenure at Ririe-Woodbury, Charon has channeled various questions about the interactions of humanity and technology through his choreography and what that means for preserving our naturally embodied selves. From Code to Universe is the artistic zenith in this particular series of his works, created in collaboration with Alexandra Harbold, theatrical director who is on the University of Utah faculty and is cofounder of the Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory, and playwright Connor Nelis Johnson, as well as the company’s six dancers. Robot Voice, the script by Johnson, was elegantly understated for how it facilitated the harmonic convergence of dance, stage acting and multimedia elements.
Everything clicked into its right place, from the moment at the beginning when Charon (portraying the character of Adam) puts on the record of Bill Withers’ song Lovely Day. Adam’s whimsy delights Francis (played by Nicki Nixon): smiley faces on her breakfast plate, his robotic voice imitation and his genuine expression of love. However, an unexpected event on this sunny morning shifts the story’s gears into a sense of ‘transcendental homelessness,’ which falls to the responsibility of the company’s six dancers (Nick Elizondo, Megan McCarthy, Fausto Rivera, Sasha Rydlizky, Miche’ Smith and Luke Dakota Zender) in conveying the story’s progression. Throughout the work, the sextet functions like a classic Greek chorus, complementing not only the words and gestures of actors but also leading the audience to navigate together the emotional void that Adam is trying to resolve. There are moments when Adam comes so close to grasping what he is searching for but yet he falls just short of discovering its satisfying outcome.
While the lion’s share of the dialogue fall to Adam and Francis, there are scenes that anchor the yet-to-be-fully-understood paradigmatic shift associated with artificial intelligence and its potential to remake time, memory and story. Ben Young rolls out an older generation projector with transparencies to tell the story of one of antiquity’s greatest libraries. Rivera appears in a cameo as a scientist trying to train a machine learning robot (Mack Barr), who has yet to replicate the idiomatic and metaphorical contexts of how two humans who know each other well could communicate without pondering what certain words or phrases could possibly mean. Near the end of the work, Smith delivers a monologue of nearly three minutes that contemplates whether creating a ‘perfectly accurate digital map’ of our brain, fed with even the most minuscule, unimportant or minor details of our life experiences, would be worth the possibility that we could live forever.
In the closing moments of From Code to Universe, as Adam and the six dancers move together on stage, we receive at least one possible tender and bittersweet answer. The moment is doubly poetic and surprisingly emotional, as Charon shares the stage with the dancers he has led and guided during his tenure. As noted in the preview published at The Utah Review, Charon incorporates snippets from the 22 works he has set on the company during his 12 seasons.
The show opener — A Mischief Sublime by Annalee Traylor — was also a company landmark: the inaugural commission as part of its Choreographic Canvas Artist initiative. Propelled marvelously by Jesse Scheinin’s score of continually agitated, restless and clever passages of faked cadences in the music, the work showcased the dancing sextet‘s theatrical chemistry while they flawlessly executed the complex acrobatic — occasionally circus-like — character in their movement. It is full of rapid switches in emotional paradoxes. The audience clearly dug into the piece, immediately from the first appearance under the curtain by Zender, who imitated a smoker’s hacking cough like a grizzled old vaudevillian clown.
Re-Act was one of Ririe-Woodbury’s best season closers in recent years, capping a historically significant chapter in the company’s artistic development. In addition to Charon, it was also the final company appearance for Elizondo, who has consistently dazzled with his performances throughout the season.