In the organizer's words:

PREMIERE

VR Dance Club celebrates the world premiere of "The Future Is Us" - an interactive, participatory audio-dance performance for 30 visitors at a time that artistically explores political attitudes, artificial intelligence and the construction of reality. Via headphones and in a cycle of hearing, seeing, movement and positioning, the visitors meet each other - without knowing what drives the others. THIS IS US. We dance together in a circle and exclude others in the process. We seek contact, but our counterpart retreats. We observe from a distance and are still visible to everyone. US LOVES YOUR ENGAGEMENT. What does that mean - are we vulnerable, dominant or secure and prominent? STAY WITH US. Video projections, movement tracking and live videography create a reactive environment that records everyone's movements in real time. This creates new impulses that are fed directly back into the audio tracks via AI speech synthesis - an ongoing process of input, movement and reaction. YOU FEED US. A media choreographic performance about mechanisms of political and social polarization: a collective encounter in the midst of different reality bubbles. THE FUTURE IS US.

TEAM

Artistic direction, choreography & interaction design Anna-Carolin Weber & Tobias Kopka

Dramaturgy René*e Reith

Text development Tobias Kopka, Helena Miko, René*e Reith, Anna-Carolin Weber

Performance Helena Miko, Phillip Dittmann, René*e Reith, Anna-Carolin Weber

Lighting design, stage Marlon Brodda

Live videography Alessandro De Matteis

Collaboration stage, technology Phillip Dittmann, Max Kolb

Sound, technology Philip Kühn

Creative coding, sound composition, video tracking in collaboration with Florencia Alonso, Fabian Bentrup, Laurin Bürmann, Lennart Melzer, Michael Nguyen (Koproduktionslabor Dortmund)

A production by VR Dance Club, co-produced by the Cologne Game Lab (TH Köln), TanzFaktur Köln and Koproduktionslabor Dortmund. Funded by the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste. Supported by the Kinder- und Jugendtheater (KJT) at Theater Dortmund and the Akademie für Theater und Digitalität Dortmund.

VR DANCE CLUB

How do dance and technology create unexpected encounters? And how does artistic participation make it possible to reflect on reality? Questions like these drive choreographer Anna-Carolin Weber and interaction designer Tobias Kopka with VR Dance Club against the backdrop of socio-politically significant change through digitalization, extended reality (XR) and artificial intelligence (AI). Central to their performative installations, which see themselves as a choreographed dialog between VR, dance, video, light, sound and visitors, is the play with new possibilities for action in a democratically staged space. Since 2022, they have produced four media choreographic works on the theme of "Movement - Encounter - Verdatung" with "I Spy With My Little Eye - Duets For One Head And Two Hands" (2022), "Beautiful Connection - A Social Performance Training" (2023), "Hybrid Encounters - A VR Dance Experience" (2024) and "Press X To Push Dancers Off Stage" (2025), which have been presented at the HAU - Hebb. at HAU - Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, tanzhaus nrw Düsseldorf, PATHOS Theater Munich, Freihandelszone Köln, Akademie für Theater und Digitalität / Theater Dortmund, Zeche Zollverein Essen and TanzFaktur, among others.

Further information: www.vrdanceclub.de