“Unauthorized: Live Generative Dance Theatre with Musebots” presented by Eigenfeldt and Ricketts

Unauthorized is a collaboration between a composer/coder, an ensemble of intelligent musical agents (musebots), and a dance/theatre artist who inhabits a character named Rufus, a tired clown that struggles to find humour and meaning in dissonance. In Unauthorized, we draw a parallel to the work of Samuel Beckett, which echoes the profound absurdity often found in the clown. In this rich collaboration, we explore new ways to approach narrative, character, setting, and props; Rufus becomes a catalyst for fractured narratives and new ways of making meaning through performance. In the telling, we trigger more stories, which fosters a sense of collective belong-ing by the nature of their commonalities and subsequent empathy.