with each other, and at what point they might become separate identities within the dramatic landscape of the piece. So in the beginning there were two major concerns:

and

The challenge was to develop a form which would support the organic movement between these two poles. In order to achieve this we developed a narrative for the early performances.

Although this format was successful from the point of view of the audience, we were dissatisfied by the manner in which the narrative seemed to segregate moments of interactivity and coexistence, and periods of art form separation. On closer examination of the work we discovered that although the narrative form was highlighting this separation, there were other contributing factors that were causing the work to fragment.

Moments when dance and music were interdependent felt like ‘demonstrations’ of interactivity, while the moments of separation seemed musically and choreographically more sophisticated and less proscriptive. Because such art form practices were ‘familiar’ to the audience, such periods of separation felt comfortable, and therefore stronger and perhaps more authoritative.

What we had unwittingly done was pitted the youthful charms of coexistence and interactivity against two mature and fully articulate art forms. This was a marriage of opposites that was bound to disappoint.

The incompatibility of interactivity versus single art-form episodes, was further compounded by the effects that our ‘sensitised performance space’ had on the physicality of the dancer. Because all the sensors were hard wired within the stage environment, the performer had to move to specific areas of the performance space, or interact with items of set or props, or, move over and around a particular portion of the floor. This was naturally physically more limiting than the moments of non-interactivity.

It is true to say that dancers are extremely capable of orientating themselves within both time and space, so in theory there should have been no problem placing sensors within the geography of the stage environment. However, a dancer’s Spacial orientation is linked to, and an inherent aspect of, the choreography being performed, it is a ‘given’ which occupies a relatively limited amount of conscious consideration as spacialisation settles within the Kinaesthetic or body-memory of a dancer. The moment one places a sensor in a performance space with which a dancer is to interact, one has ‘prioritised’ that portion of space. This means that the Spacial dynamics within the performance area are changed. Now the dancer has to deal with an additional space. Because this space is external to the body and the choreography, it demands a separate level or quality of consideration. Therefore the addition of ‘one’ sensor changes the dynamic of the dancer’s concentration