Machine Tango: An Interactive Tango Dance Performance

In Argentine tango, dancers typically respond to fixed musical recordings with improvised movements, each movement emerging in a wordless dialog between leader and follower. In the interactive work Machine Tango, this relation between dancers and music is inverted, enabling tango dancers to drive musical outcomes. Motion sensors are attached to dancer limbs, and their data is sent wirelessly to a computer, where algorithms turn the movement into sound. In doing so, the computer inserts itself in this on-going nonverbal conversation. Instead of traditional tango instruments such as the bandoneon, dancers generate and transform the sounds of typewriters and found sounds. System musical response to movement shifts during the dance, becoming more complex. The two dancers must navigate the resulting unstable musical structures as one body, responding with stylized tango movements. The difficulty of this task and the juxtaposition of the traditional with the experimental are integral to the performance aesthetic.