Most people see ballet as an “antique, classical art form,” said Laura Sen. But the vice chair of the Boston Ballet’s board of trustees sees opportunities for innovation and technology in the art form.
The Boston Ballet recently turned its annual corporate networking event into a showcase for dance, innovation and technology. According to Sen, the goal of the event was to put together a new kind of corporate event that expose attendees to innovation in ballet, and gets them involved in this work.
“There’s a lot more going on in ballet and there’s a lot of innovation in ways in which businesses or other large organizations might not understand that they actually have some things in common with ballet,” Sen said.
The event was held in the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts and brought together a few hundred attendees from some of Boston’s largest companies, including Bain Capital, Bulfinch and The Abbey Group.
After being postponed twice due to the pandemic, the Ballet held its Turning Pointe event last week, intended to bring together technologies that organization uses for its own work and to share them with the public.
“Really it is, 'Let's bring the Ballet into the 21st century and make it clear to the corporate community how they can relate to us, why they can relate to us, why they should support us,'” Sen said.
As attendees entered the Cyclorama, the first thing they saw was a trio of dancers: Principal Dancer John Lam was working with two dancers in real-time to choreograph a brand-new dance to the pulsing of a dancer’s heartbeat.
Lam worked throughout the evening with the dancers, who showcased their final product at the end of the night.
But dancers weren't the only people showing off their moves at the Turning Pointe event. Some robots got in on the action.
Dr. Merritt Moore, an American ballerina and quantum physicist, and the Boston Ballet’s Tyson Ali Clark taught an industrial robot a series of movements prior to the event and invited attendees to share the dance floor with it.
The Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention at Boston Children’s Hospital also had its own setup at the event. It included a series of machines and sensors to analyze things like a ballerina’s form and the force with which they land and take off from jumps. Ballerinas were in attendance to demonstrate, but attendees were also welcome to jump on the force pad or strap on the sensors to test their pliés.
For people who preferred to watch rather than engage in the action, the Ballet also set up ÜNI, its 360-degree multimedia experience designed to make people feel as if they’re in the center of a dance, with dancers, lights and music all around them.
