Laboratory for the Scientific Study of Dance (LAB:SYNC), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Research Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is currently developing and validating sensor-based methods for quantifying dance exposures in adults and testing relationships between multiple health outcomes and self-reported lifetime dance exposures in a clinical trial called the METRIC study (Measurement of professional dance training exposures and health correlates in 18- to 85-year-old adults).
Toward using imaginative, multidisciplinary avenues for communicating scientific results, Aston K. McCullough (LAB:SYNC Director) has teamed with LAB:SYNC collaborators Chris Aiken Barbie Diewald, and Jenna Riegel to stage the METRIC study research design and preliminary results conceptually and theatrically in a new, evening length multimedia dance work—Convergence.
As an alternative to a traditional scientific presentation, Convergence brings the audience into a blended world of dance performance and scientific research communication. Each outfitted with sensors, dancers Aiken, Diewald, McCullough, and Riegel display their own live-streamed data, as they open an impressionistic window into the scientific rationale and design for the METRIC study. With an interactive live sound score composed by Salvatore Macchia and performed by percussionist Ayano Kataoka and Audio Engineer Jazer Giles, the dancers’ individual and unique dance behaviors directly influence Macchia’s mercurial sonic world via computer vision. As the dancing quartet generate and respond to their own physiological data visually while demonstrating preliminary results from the METRIC study, they also attend to unpredictable real time changes in sonic stimuli caused by their choices.
Along with dancers Frankie Barron, Brette Cronin, Sophie Leveille, Nicole Lombardi, Jillian Murray, Alec Galavotti, and Julia Susi, the group ascends and descends musical scales and dance intensities, skip and bound across dance modes and styles, and –while intertwined with a network of sensors – display the versatility, complexity, and perhaps the ubiquity of dance.
Though Convergence is directly informed by the METRIC study, the performance is being produced independently by the UMass Amherst Dance Program with support from Five College Dance.
Convergence performances will be held February 2 – 4, 2023 at 7:30pm at UMass Amherst in the Totman Performance Lab.