What happens when a dancer is challenged by a digital counterforce that recognises, reinterprets, and translates movement into an audible dance partner? Can we imagine a co-created performance between a human performer and a machine-learning system? And if so, what creative and ethical conditions shape such a collaboration?

In a collaboration between ICK Dans Amsterdam and Waag Futurelab, this workshop, performance, and discussion explored embodied creativity at the intersection of human movement and AI. Together, we investigated what it means to dance with—and against—an algorithm, and what emerges when dance encounters machine interpretation.

The session opened with a Double Skin/Double Mind (DS/DM) movement workshop, the dance method developed by ICK Dans Amsterdam choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten.

This was followed by excerpts from Prologo d’Entrata, the opening scene of the dance opera WE, the LUST (2024), in which the dancing body continuously reshapes a musical score through an AI Toolbox that analyses movement and transforms it into sound.

The performance was followed by a discussion featuring Hiroki Nunogaki (ICK), Suzan Tunca (ICK), Francesco Cutillo (ICK), Ola Bonati (Waag), and the participants.

This session forms part of the EU research project HAMLET, which investigates the conditions under which the cultural and creative industries can be strengthened through AI and collaboration.