Open Machine is the newest work from acclaimed choreographers Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener (2023 Creative Capital Awardees), featuring a cast of nine dancers. A co-commission from NYU Skirball and The Walker Art Center, Open Machine extends Mitchell and Riener’s experiments with dance for cameras and screens and incorporates recent group practices of uncertainty. Celebrated for their innovative, collaborative choreography the duo channel this signature precision in Open Machine, where technological and human paths converge into a dynamic choreography for the stage that imagines an Artificial Intelligence lovingly programmed by experimental dance. 

Open Machine features dancers and collaborators Savannah Gaillard, Jennifer Gonzalez, Michael Greenberg, Claude (CJ) Johnson, Catherine Kirk, Cori Kresge, Chaery Moon, and Kalliope Piersol. The cast moves with precision and abandon, and grapples with responsive choice-making systems. As they synthesize disparate modes of working, they reflect the social and spatial structures that shape our daily lives. Blurring the lines between brain, body, and machine, the work builds an ever-evolving experience, with audiovisual description, projected images, and virtual renderings amplifying and reacting to the unfolding dance. The sweeping, mechanical sound score is composed by electronic musician Mas Ysa and vocal artist Charmaine Lee, with media design by Jesse Stiles, and lighting design by Davison Scandrett.