How do you choreograph a dance with drones? Lucie in the Sky unites art and technology

Posted on 29 June, 2023

The debate surrounding the rapid evolution of AI and the increasingly blurred lines between art and the artificial is inherently polarising.

But the Australasian Dance Collective’s (ADC) latest production Lucie In the Sky isn’t here to pick a side.

Debuting at Canberra Theatre Centre across 14  and 15 July, this distinctly future-facing production has found its own rhythm within the noise—a moment unlike anything seen on-stage before, where six dancers and five drones effortlessly move together as one.

For Artistic Director and wearer of endless other hats (one of which includes being a helicopter pilot), Amy Hollingsworth, the seed of inspiration for Lucie In the Sky was planted a mere 30 seconds after meeting the founder of the World of Drones and Robotics Congress, Dr Catherine Ball.

Together, these creatives from opposite spheres dreamt up a production where the threads that connect the human to the unhuman feel uncharacteristically emotional.

“Approximately six years ago, I had the grateful fortune to meet the incomparable Dr Catherine Ball who is many things; a futurist, an author, and an entrepreneur, just an incredible connector of people,” says Amy. “But she also founded the World of Drones and Robotics Congress. So, of course, when we met, it took us all of 30 seconds to start talking about dance and drones.”

“One of the things that she uttered in that first meeting was the phrase ‘emotionally coded drones’, which really stuck in my brain. And I guess in terms of us thinking about what emotionally coding a drone could look like; it was that reflection on the wonderful skills of studios like Pixar, who have anthropomorphised inanimate objects and made us fall in love with their characters.”

While the technology needed to not only code human emotion but recreate lyrical, contemporary dance is anything but simple; on stage, the complexity quickly fades—in fact, it’s as though it never existed in the first place.

During the performance, drone ‘Rue’ flies low, melancholically paced and simmering with unease, while drone ‘Skip’ moves fast, dipping, diving and weaving with childlike joy throughout the choreography. Dramatic but precise, driving but contained.

Protagonist drone ‘Lucie’ flies intimately alongside dancer Chimene Steele-Prior. While their relationship remains intentionally nuanced, their connection is tenderly rendered and weighted on stage, quickly closing the gaps that may have once lived between drone and dancer.

“We really tested all of the drone’s limits,” explains Amy.

“We looked at the feasibility of how fast they can accelerate, what they look like when they have to stop suddenly, and just tested all of the edges. And we worked through the projections of what each of the characters could look like and how each of the drones would need to move in the space for it to look like it was either happy or sad or angry, or any of the emotions that we’ve worked on tackling.”

As for the narrative that shapes this production, Amy compares it to Love Actually-style vignettes. The work will pass through audiences like waves, bringing us up to the surface and back down again—often mirroring the natural swells of human emotion.

“One of the beauties of contemporary work is that you can embrace a very literal narrative. But then there’s also room in allegorical and abstract themes that leave you more with a ‘sensation’ of something. And in the beginning of this piece, what I was really attempting to do is look at what it means to be human, or in the case of the drones, what it means to seem to be human.”

“So the narrative flow of the work is a different snapshot. Love Actually is a really good example of this—it’s a film that bounces between narratives and characters. So, it’s not a literal narrative, but more so a reflection that is really looking at the importance of humanity in the centre of our narratives, our future and technology.”

While the relationship between AI and art remains unclear, Amy says that the collaborative process that has been Lucie In the Sky makes her excited for the future. A beautiful nod to what can happen when the tech community and artists find a way to move to the same tempo—one that is human as much as it is machine.

“We have felt so held and supported by a very different group of collaborators. The work has been not only enabled by the Canberra Theatre Centre, who we are very grateful to be working with again, but also by the Australian National University, whose school of cybernetics are doing a research project on Lucie In the Sky.”

“To be really warmly welcomed by artists, the tech community and future thinkers is so exciting. It makes me feel like we are playing in dissolving any silos and really embracing this type of interdisciplinary work.”