2021

We live in a world dominated by economic principles that push us to make everything as cheap as possible. Profit is more important than quality, and the art world too is increasingly being challenged to produce more efficiently and more cheaply.
With Simple Machines, choreographer Ugo Dehaes questions this evolution by applying it fully to his artistic process: so he fired all his dancers, replaced them with robots and automated the creation process as much as possible with software.

For this performance you join Ugo around a large table. Ugo shows and explains why and how he breeds robots himself and how he trains them to be dancers who can work for him for free. He is also trying to make himself superfluous as a choreographer by, among other things, using Artificial Intelligence to come up with choreographies. Simple Machines is the beginning of an era in which simple machines compete for the attention and emotions you would have previously had only for living dancers.

Welcome to your future.