Lauren Linder rehearses for Dance Gala 2024: Agile at Hancher Auditorium.
Art meets science: UI dancers and engineers scratched new ground when robots entered the world of art at Dance Gala 2024.
A creative collaboration between the University of Iowa’s College of Engineering and Department of Dance led to an interpretive performance involving dancers and robots at Dance Gala 2024: Agile at Hancher Auditorium.
Stephanie Miracle, assistant professor of dance and choreographer of the performance, partnered with Deema Totah, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Robotics and Assistive Devices (RAD) Lab, to bring the project to life. Over the summer, high school senior Jinann AbuDagga built small robots capable of complex movements. As rehearsals progressed in the fall, the robot designs were refined to enhance interaction with the dancers.
The project provided valuable engineering insights into how robotic design can elicit emotional responses. “We can apply that in dance or, for example, in designing medical devices to encourage greater use rates,” Totah said.
The robot designs took on lifelike characteristics. One robot resembled a snake slithering across the floor. Tassels would flare when a bowtie-wearing robot spun. A trio of colorful furry objects would vibrate as if excited as they moved. Another robot had tentacles with eyelike orbs that would blink to convey emotion.
Maddie Bulman, a dance major and one of the performers, said, “Part of the process is learning the personality and integrating it with how we interact with the robot and our colleagues in the act and the rest of the piece. The engineers also used our interactions with the robots to build and code them, which adds to the meanings of our interactions.”
The project has gained traction. Totah and Miracle presented at the mechanical engineering graduate seminar and performed at the Midwest Regional Alternative Dance Festival in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with funding support from NEXUS. Their paper titled “Vulnerability is Your Friend: Co-creating Robots with Dancers,” was accepted at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
Also involved in the project were mechanical engineering students from the RAD Lab; Casey Harwood, associate professor of mechanical engineering; Kevin Swenson, a PhD candidate in music composition; and the Performing Arts Production Unit.