Opening this Sunday, July 10 at the Denver Art Museum is #dancelab, a collaborative movement installation by Wonderbound (Garrett Ammon) and Legwork Studio (Matt FaJohn) which is a part of DAM’s summer celebration—Dance! Experience the art museum in an exciting new way, where instead of viewing the exhibit you will become part of it, dancing alongside the choreographed Wonderbound dancers. As you dance, your moves will be projected in large format, creating a shared moment between you and the art.
“The execution will have a bit of magic to it. We want to create elements of wonder and surprise, but mostly we want people to have fun with it,” remarks Matt FaJohn of Legwork Studio “The museum is a place for contemplation, and art evokes all types of emotion. Hopefully #dancelab will be a place within the museum where people can get out of their comfort zone and kind of cut loose.”
In order to pull off this little bit of magic, the exhibition uses motion detection technology and a program specially designed and written by Legwork, a studio that creates animation and interactive experiences with many different companies around the world. The collective effort between Wonderbound and Legwork not only results in an extraordinary exhibition, it reveals a deeper yearning for technology and art to connect and enrich one another in today’s quickly evolving world.
Garrett Ammon of Wonderbound explains, “from the beginning of this project, we wanted it to express Wonderbound’s core values by embracing dance’s roots as a truly social artform. Legwork Studio’s passion for using technology as a tool for connecting people in genuine ways have made them the perfect partner for #dancelab.”
Wonderbound has been a dance company out of Denver since 2007, led by the husband–and–wife duo Garrett Ammon and Dawn Fay, whose focus centers on contemporary dance artists collaborating with multi–media artists to create fascinating visual displays that seek to engage the audience in the act of discovery. Sometimes choreographing their dances to rock and pop music, Wonderbound widens the boundaries for a dance company, allowing them to explore themes that would otherwise go untouched in a traditional setting. Because Wonderbound appreciates local talent, the music for this particular collaboration will be a mixture of Denver’s top bands.
#dancelab is a must–see this summer. It represents a new wave of art, where all artistic endeavors are equal, and in that equality art will cease to exist in one single genre and instead exist in several simultaneously, more accurately representing the human condition.
This exhibition is only one part of the Dance! series at the Denver Art Museum, which is “a campus–wide celebration of creative expression through movement.” #dancelab will be open July 10–October 2. For a complete list of other exhibitions within the Dance! series, visit the DAM website.