In April, Yorkshire Dance joined forces with Stuart Clarke, Leeds Digital Festival Director inviting artists, technologists, creative companies and designers to come together to explore digital innovation, creative technology and radical ideas.

Leeds Digital Festival is an open platform showcasing the great digital culture of Leeds and helping to celebrate the amazing people and innovative organisations in the City.

We were delighted to be joined for the event by 4 wonderful experts in the digital realm including Rachael Burton and David Haylock from Watershed Bristol who introduced the Reactor for Awareness in Motion (RAM) technology, a project developed in Japan. RAM focuses on creating and shaping dance movement with real-time digital feedback. It is a suite of tools designed specifically to capture dancers’ motion data, and to generate and operate a virtual environment that responds to movement to inspire and affect choreography.

Laura Kriefman, a multiple award winning Choreographer and Creative Technologist whose company Guerilla Dance Project are working in augmented dance also came along from Bristol. The company has been commissioned world-wide and has won multiple awards for digital innovation.

Participants were able to test for themselves the interactive sound system Laura is currently working with for her project Kicking the Mic in which the dancer loops and layers sounds, creating danced compositions. It is combined with an LED dress that lights up and changes colour to the live sounds, creating a visual score to the music and dance.

Guy Utley from Tall Digital Creative Agency, Leeds presented an interactive video experience, social integration and responsive website which showcased digital tools to capture live experiences and (re-)animating them online with interactive elements that were further utilised as audience development tools.

A group of curious participants were able to test and play with the technology first hand and reflect on their experience as well as how this might be relevant for the work they create and engage with.

It was certainly exciting to be able to engage first hand with some of the innovative technologies out there and the engaged responses from our diverse group of dance artists and specialists who had come to join the event confirmed that we will pursue our engagement in other digital events in the future.