Dancing the Future: AI at the Battery

 --By Tom Phillips 

Battery Dance in Frontiers: Photo by Steven Pisano

“Why do they all look so mean and weird?” whispered my companion as we watched six black-clad dancers writhe and scuttle, spin and splay on a stage by the Hudson River. “Maybe they’re zombies?” I guessed.

No, it’s worse, I later thought. These are not the undead, because they were never alive. These are our new companions, beings who are not and have never been.  In a twist, "Frontiers" shows us human beings dancing like AI creations.  

“Frontiers” was the centerpiece of opening night at the Battery Dance Festival August 9, and set you to wondering what uncharted territory we were in. This was a step beyond the anti-social ensemble work of post-modern dance. These dancers seemed inhuman. They simulated sexual gestures but without any sense of connection, or even recognition. They scurried in groups, more like insects than people. Late in the piece, two of them encountered each other face to face — awkwardly bobbing and weaving, unable to engage. It felt eerily like our daily encounters with unreal persons who have no way of knowing who or what we are. “Frontiers,” choreographed by Turkish-Dutch choreographer Rutkay Özpinar and danced fiercely and flawlessly by the Battery Dance ensemble, is a picture of the unreal future that's already here. 

Full disclosure: A program note I discovered later said the piece was about the Dutch connection to New York, “inviting audiences to imagine a borderless future shaped by empathy, exchange, and shared purpose.“
I saw nothing like that! But the rest of the program was much warmer.

Photo: Claudio Rodriguez

It began with a ritual dedication, “Lifting,” danced with hoops and sung by indigenous American performer Marie Ponce. She blessed the space at the newly re-opened Robert F. Wagner Park, closed for two years to be fortified against storms to come.

Tap dancer John Manzari then danced up a storm with a cool jazz trio. His metallic shoes tattooed a stage that was miked to pick up not just tapping but also the scrapes, kicks and shuffles in between. He used it to create a soundscape both graceful and gritty. Like New York, man.

Photo by Claudio Rodriguez

The last piece brought tears to the eyes of a 20th Century man. The Limon Dance Company, in brightly colored leotards that glowed in the fading sunset, flew through Jose Limon’s 1964 Choreographic Offering — an homage to his mentor Doris Humphrey. Here were humans, dancing with each other, pairing off and circling up, celebrating the life we once took for granted — beauty and joy in the flesh.

Copyright 2025 by Tom Phillips