Originally from Canada, Matthias studied with the Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre in Toronto before completing his training with Transitions Dance Company at Laban. A member of Wayne McGregor’s Random Dance for five years he has also worked with companies including Kerry Nicholls Dance Company and Matthew Bourne’s Adventures In Motion Pictures.

The DanceDigital commission for Thought Dance supports Matthias’s research into the relationship between mind and body. Matthias began an initial period of development with support from the British Dance Edition Research Project 2010 and now continues to develop his ideas in partnership with Nottingham Trent University.

Thought Dance will be developed into an interactive installation for two participants, each wearing an ‘Emotiv Epoc’ wireless EEG headset and positioned either side of a table surface containing an embedded screen.  Custom-designed software will create distinct real-time visual representations of each participant’s brain activity. The interaction between these will produce further visual and sound effects. The work will enable participants to intentionally cause particular events to occur on the screen by modulating their own thought activity, thus engaging in a visible and volitional ‘thought dance’ with one another.

The work stems from the Matthias’s interest in approaching dance as an exploration of the relationship between mind and body, driven by a fascination with the rapid scientific advances occurring in this area. The project proposes a viewpoint on dance as a cultural arena in which changing notions of mind/body relation can be examined and embodied in unique ways.

For more information on the artist visit http://www.matthias-sperling.com

DanceDigital has commissioned two new works by Janis Claxton Dance, Human Animal and Humanimalia. The works challenge perceptions of who’s watching who in performance and expose performers and audience alike to the intrinsic evolutionary complicity between humans and animals.  Both works are inspired by the Janis’s on-going research into primatology.

Human Animal is a durational performance installation. The work evolves according to location and audience who, depending on their own particular human animal behaviour, became part of this unique installation.

Humanimalia is a thought provoking and moving full length work portraying universal themes that are inherent in all primates through a revealing journey of submission, dominance, repression and revelation. With a unique sound score composed by Phillip Pinsky (Grid Iron, Royal Lyceum Theatre), the performance takes place on and around a set of purpose designed Perspex boxes, the ‘human animals’ dancing in a seamless interaction between each other, audience, spacial confinement and video projection.

According to Janis, “with the view to engage audiences of a broad range, the works explore resonances with all humans and other primates through exploring gestures and behaviour patterns that inhabit all of our species as well as our closet relatives, the other Great apes. The works aim to engage audiences in questions and possibilities about our place in the world, and to challenge the current predisposition that humans are superior to all other life on earth.”

For more information on the artist visit http://www.janisclaxton.com/

After Effects will be created using a drum kit that has been specially modified so that light will shine from inside the drums. A mixture of acoustic and digital drum sounds will be triggered using movement and both natural and man made objects to influence the light and sound from within the drum, thus bringing it to life.

The integral artistic motivation is to explore the effect of rhythm, both on the environment created and on both the performer and the audiences emotions. There are effectively two performers within the piece; the dancer and the drum, which acts as a vessel for both light and sound. The digital elements embodied within the drum bring this inanimate object to life. The light and sound are individually in control of their own rhythms whilst being able to determine one another’s. The dancer will have a direct interplay with these elements, creating an experience that heightens the senses for both performer and audience.

For more information on the artist visit http://darrenellisdance.co.uk/