Inside a Monthly Series Where Dancers Trigger Saxophones and Community Centers Double as Labs
On the third Friday of January, the basement of Woden City's Tramway Arts Centre held 140 people, 16 musicians, and a tangle of cables that choreographer Mei Okonkwo called "our other ensemble member." The occasion was the launch of Signal & Swing, a monthly series that has become the most visible outgrowth of a growing experiment: fusing live jazz with real-time movement technology, and opening the process to whoever wants to step inside.
The results are uneven, occasionally chaotic, and deliberately unfinished. They are also drawing attention far beyond this mid-sized city's familiar arts district.
From Open-Mic to Technical Rehearsal
Okonkwo, 34, trained in both contemporary dance and electrical engineering before returning to Woden City in 2022. She began hosting informal sessions at the Southside Community Hub, combining her two fields almost by accident. "A saxophonist left his loop pedal at the hub," she said after the January performance. "I wondered what would happen if a dancer's foot, not his hand, controlled the record trigger."
What happened was a six-month trial with wearable accelerometers—small sensors strapped to wrists, ankles, and torsos—that convert physical acceleration into MIDI signals. Those signals now feed into software patched by Marcus Chen, a sound designer and former jazz pianist who dropped out of a Sydney conservatory to build interactive audio systems.
Chen, 29, sits cross-legged on stage during performances, troubleshooting on a laptop while the ensemble plays. "The dancers aren't just interpreting the music," he explained. "Mei's ensemble is literally rewriting the harmony in real time. A sharp arm cut can transpose the key. A slow spiral might open a reverb tail that swallows the room for ten seconds."
The technology is fragile. At the January show, a sensor dropped its connection during the second set, forcing drummer Alina Kowalski to extend a solo for nearly three minutes while Chen rebooted the patch. The audience cheered. Kowalski, who has played with Okonkwo since the hub sessions began, later called the failure "the most honest moment of the night."
What the Tech Actually Does
The Signal & Swing setup has evolved into three discrete systems:
- Wearable accelerometers on four dancers transmit velocity and orientation data to Chen's Ableton-based rig.
- Spatial audio speakers arranged in a dome above the Tramway basement allow individual instruments to orbit the room based on dancer positioning.
- A community-built LED grid, assembled during weekend workshops at the Southside Hub, responds to combined tempo and motion thresholds, shifting color temperature when the full ensemble reaches synchronized peaks.
The equipment is modest by festival standards. Chen's total build cost sits under €8,000, funded partly by a city arts grant and partly by a crowdfunding campaign that reached its goal in eleven days. "We're not hiding the wires," Okonkwo said. "The audience sees the failure, the negotiation, the adjustment. That visibility is the point."
Who Shows Up, and What They Make
The Southside Community Hub now runs two weekly programs tied to the series. On Tuesdays, Build Nights invite musicians, dancers, and self-taught programmers to test sensors, rewrite code, or simply argue about whether an unexpected digital glitch counts as composition. On Thursdays, First Moves offers free improvisation workshops for participants with no formal training in either jazz or dance.
Attendance at Build Nights has grown from six regulars in early 2023 to roughly thirty-five. Among them is Ibrahim Sesay, a 61-year-old retired postal worker who had never played an instrument before he began attending. He now operates the LED grid during performances. "I came because my neighbor dragged me," Sesay said. "I stayed because nobody here asks for your résumé."
The demographic spread is unusual for a jazz-adjacent scene. Workshop facilitators report that roughly 40 percent of participants are under 25, with a significant contingent over 55. Gender balance is close to even, and the free-entry model has drawn attendees from Woden City's outer suburbs who rarely visited the downtown arts precinct before.
Beyond the Basement
The Woden City experiment is already being adapted elsewhere. In March, Okonkwo and Chen will install a stripped-down version of their system at a Rotterdam warehouse for a four-night collaboration with Dutch saxophonist Sanne van Dijk. A loosely affiliated collective in São Paulo has begun building its own sensor rig after several members attended a Signal & Swing performance via livestream last October.
These connections have happened without management or institutional touring support. They have also happened without much consensus on what, exactly, this movement should be called. Okonkwo avoids the term "revolution." She prefers "negotiation
