SWEAT - DanceTECH Research Showcase (19-20 June 2025)

The DanceTECH Research Showcase is a highlight of the SWEAT Hong Kong International Dance Workshop Festival 2025, featuring innovative choreographic methods that integrate cutting-edge technologies such as interactive systems, generative AI, motion capture, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR). This showcase brings together emerging choreographers from the Asia Pacific region to present their research findings and process-oriented projects at the intersection of dance and technology.

The DanceTECH Research Showcase marks a significant step towards establishing the Academy as a leading Dance Technology hub. The vision is to create a collaborative environment where artists, technologists, and researchers can converge to explore the evolving landscape of dance and technology. This initiative aligns with the Academy's commitment to embracing developments in dance science and technology and equipping students with skills needed for a rapidly changing industry.

Event Details

Location: Dance & Technology Lab, 5/F, TML Artist Block, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
Format: Lecture demonstrations followed by Q&A discussions
Languages: English, Mandarin^

^ The programme will have AI speech translation available, so participants can listen to or read their chosen language on their mobile phones and headphones.

Add-on Programme

From Notion to Motion: Creative Play Between Dance Makers and Technologists

Co-presented by the School of Dance, HKAPA and the Hong Kong Dance Alliance at the SWEAT, brings together dance makers and creative technologists to reflect on their collaborative processes through a moderated conversation intertwined with live demonstrations on 9-11 June, led creatively by Jeff HSIEH and NGUYEN Anh. Framed as a fireside chat prior to the Festival, this encounter invites professional and academic audiences to witness how embodied practice and technology can co-shape artistic inquiry. Practitioners and artists from dance or creative technology fields are also encouraged to submit workshop proposals that showcase their unique artistic methods. Rather than a conventional panel, this session is a performative dialogue—where movement and technology engage with one another, inviting new ways of thinking, creating, and experiencing.

Event Details

Date: 11 June 2025
Time: 11:00 -13:00
Location: Dance & Technology Lab, 5/F, TML Artist Block, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
Format: Creative Play Workshop
Language: Cantonese, English, Mandarin

Ticketing

The Showcase and Add-On Programme are part of the SWEAT initiatives. To participate, please purchase a SWEAT Day Pass or Full Pass.

* Limited seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Featured Presentations

We have selected eight exciting proposals to be presented during the showcase. Each presentation will include a lecture demonstration followed by a discussion to encourage audience engagement and to foster dialogue on the latest technological trends in dance.

19 June 2025 14:00 - 15:30

KINGDOM
Chao Tingting
This work stems from the artist’s personal experience of loss, reflecting on the disappearance of people, places, and memories in an era of rapid change. Through daily scanning practices, abandoned spaces, objects, and fragmented self-images are collected and reconstructed into a digital kingdom of broken visuals. Utilizing VR environments and real-time streaming technology, the performer navigates between physical and virtual realms through embodied expression. The piece imagines how memories might be preserved in the future, exploring the tension between digital impermanence and physical presence, and how fragmented traces can reshape our understanding of time, memory, and existence

KINGDOM

Chao Tingting

This work stems from the artist’s personal experience of loss, reflecting on the disappearance of people, places, and memories in an era of rapid change. Through daily scanning practices, abandoned spaces, objects, and fragmented self-images are collected and reconstructed into a digital kingdom of broken visuals. Utilizing VR environments and real-time streaming technology, the performer navigates between physical and virtual realms through embodied expression. The piece imagines how memories might be preserved in the future, exploring the tension between digital impermanence and physical presence, and how fragmented traces can reshape our understanding of time, memory, and existence

WoMan in the Mirror
RAY LC Lareina Molin Li Grace Fan Zhang
WoMan in the Mirror explores how two dancers can co-control a single avatar in a motion capture (MoCap) environment—one guiding the upper body, the other the lower. Through this collaborative setup, the performers improvise a shared “dream sequence” that blends their distinct movement intentions into one digital body. This project highlights how MoCap technology opens up new possibilities for co-embodiment, mutual negotiation, and expanded expressivity on virtual stages, offering an alternative mode of presence and agency in live performance.

WoMan in the Mirror

RAY LC

Lareina Molin Li

Grace Fan Zhang

WoMan in the Mirror explores how two dancers can co-control a single avatar in a motion capture (MoCap) environment—one guiding the upper body, the other the lower. Through this collaborative setup, the performers improvise a shared “dream sequence” that blends their distinct movement intentions into one digital body. This project highlights how MoCap technology opens up new possibilities for co-embodiment, mutual negotiation, and expanded expressivity on virtual stages, offering an alternative mode of presence and agency in live performance.

19 June 2025 16:00 - 17:30

Out of Body
Yan Xiaoqiang Oliver Shing
This showcase is from our practice-based research on the interaction and synchronization between Chinese Dance and digital visualization, to explore the possibilities between the dance and technology, which are treated as equal partners. The movement vocabulary is based on the Spiral in Chinese Dance, which is one of the fundamental principles of bodily moving in Chinese Dance. It comes from the constant contrast in moving directions between upper and lower body which produces the unique dynamics in both signature postures(舞姿) and moving momentum (動勢). It also bodily reflets the concept of 陰陽交錯 (Yin and Yang intertwined) and虛實相生(coexistence of virtuality and reality) in tradition Chinese philosophy, which provides a perfect starting point for this research on the collaboration between human body and digital language, physical theatre space and virtual space, furthermore to discuss yin and yang or virtuality and reality in the dance and dance making. Meanwhile, the research mainly focuses on the dancers responding to live camera(s) with time delay effect and how they interact spontaneously with each other between dancers and digital visualization. The research aims to achieve objectives from following perspectives: 1. Choreographic Potential. How to collaborate between dance and digital multimedia in an equal way without losing the unique nature of respective disciplines? What will happen if multimedia is considered as part of choreographic elements? Can the multimedia be extension of movements instead of just an ambience provider? Any possibility of aesthetical development or change with technology involved? 2. Performing capacity. What is the impact for dancers in this collaboration? From dancer’s perspective, how to adapt or change their way of moving in response to the digital visualization? How can multimedia respond to and enhance the dancer’s energy? 3. Spatial transformation. Between human body and digital language, physical theatre space and virtual space, What and where is the boundary between the reality and virtuality in the dance and dance making? 4. Viewing Experience. What is the impact for audience’s engagement ? Is it going to expand or limit audience’s own imagination and interpretation? How will the whole viewing experience be changed or improved when the previous elements are combined? Instead of finished production, this showcase just reflects the current stage of research that focuses more on investigating how dancers and technology interact during the creative process.
This showcase is based on the research fully supported by the HKAPA Research Seed Fund.

Out of Body

Yan Xiaoqiang

Oliver Shing

This showcase is from our practice-based research on the interaction and synchronization between Chinese Dance and digital visualization, to explore the possibilities between the dance and technology, which are treated as equal partners.

The movement vocabulary is based on the Spiral in Chinese Dance, which is one of the fundamental principles of bodily moving in Chinese Dance. It comes from the constant contrast in moving directions between upper and lower body which produces the unique dynamics in both signature postures(舞姿) and moving momentum (動勢). It also bodily reflets the concept of 陰陽交錯 (Yin and Yang intertwined) and虛實相生(coexistence of virtuality and reality) in tradition Chinese philosophy, which provides a perfect starting point for this research on the collaboration between human body and digital language, physical theatre space and virtual space, furthermore to discuss yin and yang or virtuality and reality in the dance and dance making.

Meanwhile, the research mainly focuses on the dancers responding to live camera(s) with time delay effect and how they interact spontaneously with each other between dancers and digital visualization. The research aims to achieve objectives from following perspectives:

1. Choreographic Potential. How to collaborate between dance and digital multimedia in an equal way without losing the unique nature of respective disciplines? What will happen if multimedia is considered as part of choreographic elements? Can the multimedia be extension of movements instead of just an ambience provider? Any possibility of aesthetical development or change with technology involved?

2. Performing capacity. What is the impact for dancers in this collaboration? From dancer’s perspective, how to adapt or change their way of moving in response to the digital visualization? How can multimedia respond to and enhance the dancer’s energy?

3. Spatial transformation. Between human body and digital language, physical theatre space and virtual space, What and where is the boundary between the reality and virtuality in the dance and dance making?

4. Viewing Experience. What is the impact for audience’s engagement ? Is it going to expand or limit audience’s own imagination and interpretation? How will the whole viewing experience be changed or improved when the previous elements are combined?

Instead of finished production, this showcase just reflects the current stage of research that focuses more on investigating how dancers and technology interact during the creative process.

This showcase is based on the research fully supported by the HKAPA Research Seed Fund.

REfact
Zelia Tan
REfact is a hybrid dance project where a solo performer interacts with motion capture, avatars, and VR to explore identity, presence, and embodiment across physical and digital spaces. Rooted in Extended Reality (XR) and inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s "Apparatus of Capture," the work examines transformation, diasporic memory, and relationality. It questions how choreography shifts through displacement, sensory adaptation, and data fragmentation. Drawing from bodily archives and interaction design, REfact engages with projection mapping, sensors, and improvisation to reflect on ephemerality. The project challenges the assumed loss of intimacy in digital performance, proposing instead a reimagined relational space—where presence and disappearance are dynamically negotiated within post-human and hybrid realities. The concept and idea of the work were conceived and developed through the "FIRST Creation Platform" at West Kowloon Cultural District, and REfract is supported by the International Coproduction Fund (Internationaler Koproduktionsfonds) from the Goethe-Institut. This is a collaborative creative project by ZZZT in partnership with TechDanceLab.

REfact

Zelia Tan

REfact is a hybrid dance project where a solo performer interacts with motion capture, avatars, and VR to explore identity, presence, and embodiment across physical and digital spaces. Rooted in Extended Reality (XR) and inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s "Apparatus of Capture," the work examines transformation, diasporic memory, and relationality. It questions how choreography shifts through displacement, sensory adaptation, and data fragmentation. Drawing from bodily archives and interaction design, REfact engages with projection mapping, sensors, and improvisation to reflect on ephemerality. The project challenges the assumed loss of intimacy in digital performance, proposing instead a reimagined relational space—where presence and disappearance are dynamically negotiated within post-human and hybrid realities.

The concept and idea of the work were conceived and developed through the "FIRST Creation Platform" at West Kowloon Cultural District, and REfract is supported by the International Coproduction Fund (Internationaler Koproduktionsfonds) from the Goethe-Institut. This is a collaborative creative project by ZZZT in partnership with TechDanceLab.

20 June 2025 09:00 - 10:30

Layer
Fong Xiaoxuen
The Guiding environment shapes a human’s mindset and choices. In recent years, the trend of social media promotes filtered information and fragmented summaries through photo and video, especially the short-form content. The emotions conveyed by these images and video influence human subconscious biases. In the past, human’s expansion and controlling over resources through visible actions such as warfare can be seen. By contrast, the recent monopolizing and controlling of mindset is invisible which resulted unawareness in current society and form a larger-scale manipulation. This shift emphasizes how today's influences are often invisible, affecting our perceptions and decisions without our direct realization.

Layer

Fong Xiaoxuen

The Guiding environment shapes a human’s mindset and choices. In recent years, the trend of social media promotes filtered information and fragmented summaries through photo and video, especially the short-form content. The emotions conveyed by these images and video influence human subconscious biases. In the past, human’s expansion and controlling over resources through visible actions such as warfare can be seen. By contrast, the recent monopolizing and controlling of mindset is invisible which resulted unawareness in current society and form a larger-scale manipulation. This shift emphasizes how today's influences are often invisible, affecting our perceptions and decisions without our direct realization.

Vanishing
Jackie Liang
"Vanishing" explores the philosophical interplay between existence and dissolution through the fusion of dance and digital technology. Employing metaphors of "summer blossoms in full splendor" and "dispersing dust," the work visualizes the transient nature of individuality within spacetime. The recurring motif of "chromatic smoke dissipation" deconstructs the symbiotic relationship between material forms and memory traces. By constructing a dynamic "archive of vanishing" within theatrical space, the piece digitally reimagines bodily trajectories to reveal multidimensional dialectics inherent in human existence.

Vanishing

Jackie Liang

"Vanishing" explores the philosophical interplay between existence and dissolution through the fusion of dance and digital technology. Employing metaphors of "summer blossoms in full splendor" and "dispersing dust," the work visualizes the transient nature of individuality within spacetime. The recurring motif of "chromatic smoke dissipation" deconstructs the symbiotic relationship between material forms and memory traces. By constructing a dynamic "archive of vanishing" within theatrical space, the piece digitally reimagines bodily trajectories to reveal multidimensional dialectics inherent in human existence.

20 June 2025 11:00 - 12:30

(NO W)AVE
Yuzo Ishiyama
"(NO W)AVE" is a live artwork that erases the boundary between a music gig and a dance performance. The sound produced by the movements of a performer wearing wireless devices is sampled in real-time and turned into music. The performer then adds further movements based on the music. In other words, the performer is both a dancer and a musician playing musical instruments at the same time. "(NO W)AVE" easily transcends the categories of art. This work sheds light on the many forms of "isolation" that lurk in contemporary society. The audience witnesses the various scenes of "isolation" appearing on stage. The title of the work includes the word "(NO W)". "(NO W)AVE" is truly a contemporary live artwork attempting to describe the "NOW". https://youtu.be/SEJLp1Dvc88

(NO W)AVE

Yuzo Ishiyama

"(NO W)AVE" is a live artwork that erases the boundary between a music gig and a dance performance.

The sound produced by the movements of a performer wearing wireless devices is sampled in real-time and turned into music.

The performer then adds further movements based on the music. In other words, the performer is both a dancer and a musician playing musical instruments at the same time. "(NO W)AVE" easily transcends the categories of art.

This work sheds light on the many forms of "isolation" that lurk in contemporary society. The audience witnesses the various scenes of "isolation" appearing on stage.

The title of the work includes the word "(NO W)".

"(NO W)AVE" is truly a contemporary live artwork attempting to describe the "NOW".

https://youtu.be/SEJLp1Dvc88

Interactive Systems and the Choreography of Curiosity
Andreas Schlegel Brian O'Reilly Melissa Quek
Sensors that capture data on variables such as distance, velocity or volume become the mediation point between sound and movement, music and dance. The values of the captured data are translated into sound or light output. The relationship between movement and output by an object is usually direct but the mediation of the sensors allows the artist-researchers to map the input data and output in a more varied manner to give an illusion of unpredictability. An interactive ecosystem where the interaction between the motion of the dancers and the sensors influences the output of audio and lights, the changes in light and sound affect the dancers in return, indicates the possibility that with experimentation, the range of outcomes is narrowed. That the unpredictable could be made more predictable gives rise to an improvisational framework that becomes the architecture for the choreography of curiosity to appear.

Interactive Systems and the Choreography of Curiosity

Andreas Schlegel

Brian O'Reilly

Melissa Quek

Sensors that capture data on variables such as distance, velocity or volume become the mediation point between sound and movement, music and dance. The values of the captured data are translated into sound or light output. The relationship between movement and output by an object is usually direct but the mediation of the sensors allows the artist-researchers to map the input data and output in a more varied manner to give an illusion of unpredictability.

An interactive ecosystem where the interaction between the motion of the dancers and the sensors influences the output of audio and lights, the changes in light and sound affect the dancers in return, indicates the possibility that with experimentation, the range of outcomes is narrowed. That the unpredictable could be made more predictable gives rise to an improvisational framework that becomes the architecture for the choreography of curiosity to appear.