Without Walls

Virtual reality dances its way into a new era of performance.

Visitors to the Dance on Camera Festival lined up inside the Walter Reade Theater to experience “Aether,” the new virtual reality exhibit. Through a pair of oversized goggles, viewers entered a 360-degree world of motion, music and light. Sparks radiated off of swaying figures, bursting through the darkness before fizzling out.

“It was truly a mesmerizing experience,” said LaJuné McMillian, creator of the project.

February’s annual festival showcased VR technology for the first time this year, said Chihiro Shimizu, festival volunteer and director of Dance Films Association’s Emerging Movement Council.

As companies like Google and Facebook have popularized VR, choreographers have begun using the new technology to simulate live performance and broaden the ways in which audiences experience movement.

New York University’s Dance and New Media program incorporated VR into its curriculum this year, said Cari Ann Shim Sham, director of the program. VR also appeared as a frequent topic in many panel discussions at NYU’s Dance and New Media Conference in April.

“There are all these studios popping up that are VR production houses and they do not have any content,” Shim Sham said. Dance “is an easy option … to film in the round.”

Dutch National Ballet affiliate Peter Leung released “Night Fall,” a VR ballet, in September. Akram Kahn, director of the Akram Kahn Company, released “Giselle VR” for the English National Ballet in October.

“Everyone is trying to figure it out,” Shim Sham said. “I would hope for there to be more of a creative process in designing the dance to be a 360 experience, rather than just putting a camera into a dance that is already created.”

Shim Sham choreographed for “My First Big Break,” a 360-degree music video for DJ Cut Chemist, in 2008.

“I was thinking less about traditional style choreography and more about pathways, and passing, and circling,” she said.

Choreographers must learn to account for the circular lens, which produces a warping effect, she continued.

“You can put your arms around the lens and it makes your arms look really long,” she said.

To work with the effect, Shim Sham cast hip-hop and break dancers, she continued.

“I knew arm stuff would work really well,” she said.

“The further away we were from the camera, the more opaque we would appear, … so I was conscious of making sure my movement was predominantly along the circumference of the circle,” said Annalise Van Even, a New York-based dancer who has performed in dance films and VR. “Proximity definitely matters.”

The stationary nature of the VR camera also restricted movement, she said.

“With regular film … I have agency over where to direct the camera,” she continued. “In VR, the relationship is one sided, as … the camera does not really accommodate for me.”

Cable length and the need to remain close to a sensor restrict the viewer, too, Shimizu said.

“With interactive dance works, ideally you want to be wireless,” she said.

Kim Clarete, a volunteer in charge of setting up the VR stations at the Dance and New Media Conference, recalled technical difficulties.

“There were so many things that we couldn’t figure out on our own,” she said. “Unless you are an expert, it is not user friendly.”

“Programming … takes a lot of tech skills, money and time that most dance artists do not have,” Shimizu said.

She would like to see basic software that educates students on how to build VR, she continued.

“It would open up so many more possibilities for artists,” she said.

“I do not know if anyone has really hit it on the head,” Shim Sham said. “I think there is more creativity possible … using what is going on with the gaming and the animated world of VR.”

To build “Aether,” McMillian, along with an animator and choreographer, worked with a motion capture suit at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering to render a 3-D model of the body. The animator then designed the multicolored sparks, called “particle systems,” that leap off of the moving figures in the experience, McMillian said.

At the Dance on Camera Festival, the project was shown both inside VR goggles and in a live demonstration on a stage. Performers wearing Perception Neuron suits danced, while their particle avatars moved on a screen above them, McMillian continued.

At the Dance and New Media Conference, guests talked “a lot about the rules and what the possibilities are” for VR, Shim Sham said.

Moving cameras, as opposed to a single, stationary camera, present opportunities for more creativity, she said.

“Everyone is afraid to make the viewer nauseous, but the most successful animated VR pieces are exactly those things, like the roller coaster ride,” she continued.

“There is something that can be really powerful with dance and 360 film and movement, and figuring out how to move those things in a way that would create new sensations in the body,” she said.

“I think it is the second best thing to attending a live performance,” Van Even said. “Dance films cannot exactly capture dance in its entirety, since they are making a live experience two-dimensional.”

VR’s capabilities extend even beyond those of live performance, Shim Sham said. Scientific findings indicate that the brain records memories in new ways when immersed in a VR experience.

“It is more like the way a brain dreams,” she said. While viewers are surrounded in VR from every direction, they cannot see any parts of their own bodies in the experience.

In a theater, an imaginary “fourth wall” divides the audience and the performer, she said. In VR, “there are no walls,” she continued.

“You are in it,” she said. “It is doing something that stage … cannot do.”

“As concert dance is becoming less popular, VR is a way to bring the stage to more viewers,” Van Even said. “Dance and art need to always be accountable for the progression of the times.”

“For people who would not normally go see dance performances but are interested in technology, this will give them a chance to experience dance,” Shimizu said. “A 360 livestream of a live performance directly to a VR headset … will help more people to have access.”

Young teenage boys use the technology heavily, Shim Sham said.

“Maybe they do not want to be dragged to ‘The Nutcracker’ with their mom, but they would like to be in an immersive ‘Nutcracker’ world,” she said. “It could expose them to things they normally would not go see.”

“It’s so new, just give it time,” she said. “There is a lot of potential.”