NEW HARTFORD, Conn.—At 8:17 p.m. on May 10, dancer Mara Lin took the stage at the New Hartford Performing Arts Center in silence. No orchestra swelled. Instead, a translucent digital avatar flickered to life on the downstage scrim, mirroring her movements with a half-beat delay before fracturing into three mirror images that dissolved into particles. The audience murmured. Some leaned forward. Others reached for their phones.
This was "Echoes of the Future," the opening piece of the 2024 New Hartford Contemporary Dance Showcase, and it set the tone for an evening preoccupied with the collision of dance and digital technology.
A Local Showcase in a Crowded Field
The annual showcase, now in its eighth year, has increasingly positioned itself as a laboratory for dance-tech experimentation. That ambition places it in conversation with better-funded institutions: Wayne McGregor's long-running collaborations with Google Arts Lab, Troika Ranch's sensor-driven work, and even the viral motion-capture performances of Japanese troupe Elevenplay. Whether New Hartford belongs in that tier depends on whom you ask.
Lila Nova, the London-based choreographer behind "Echoes of the Future," has built a reputation blending classical technique with real-time motion capture. For this piece, she used an inertial capture system—wireless suitswith embedded accelerometers and gyroscopes—to stream Lin's movement data into Unreal Engine 5, which rendered the avatar on the scrim in something close to real time. When the synchronization held, the effect was striking: Lin's bourrées multiplied into geometric patterns, her grand jeté leaving a trail of frozen silhouettes. When it didn't, the avatar stuttered or drifted, and the piece became a dance between dancer and glitch.
"The lag is part of the vocabulary now," Nova said during a post-show talkback. "We're not hiding the technology. We're performing with it."
Not everyone was convinced. "I wanted to watch the dancer, and I kept getting pulled to the screen," said Patricia Okonkwo, a Hartford-based choreographer in attendance. "There's a tension there that I'm not sure the piece resolved."
Motion as Instrument
The evening's most technically ambitious work was the world premiere of "Sonic Bodies," a collaboration between electronic musician Aria Vex and the New York-based experimental troupe The Quantum Leapers. Here, the five dancers wore sensor-laden suits—this time with flex sensors at the joints and piezoelectric pads at the palms and feet—that triggered and modulated synthesized sound patches in Ableton Live. A raised arm might swell a pad chord; a stomp could cut a rhythmic break.
The result was less a scored composition than an improvised duet between movement and audio. At its best, during a solo by dancer Theo Park, the sound seemed to emanate from the body itself—a crackle in the elbow, a sub-bass thrum in the spine. At its messiest, the ensemble sections risked sonic overload, with five bodies generating competing frequencies that never quite cohered.
Attendees in the first several rows were offered AR glasses—modified NReal Airs, according to program notes—that overlaid particle visualizations onto the sound sources. About thirty people accepted them. Several removed the glasses midway through, complaining of eye strain and a diminished view of the dancers' full bodies. "Cool idea, but I missed half the footwork," said audience member Derek Santos.
Vex, watching from a mixing station stage left, adjusted levels in real time. "We're still learning what the room can handle," he said afterward. "This is prototype territory."
What Worked, What Didn't
The 340-seat theater, a converted 1930s movie house, was not built for this level of technical complexity. Cables snaked across the lobby. A projector overheated during intermission, delaying the second half by twelve minutes. The house manager apologized over the PA. These friction points—absent from the polished promotional materials circulated before the event—grounded the evening in a useful reality: this is regional arts infrastructure straining to host international ambitions.
Still, when the pieces landed, they landed with force. Nova's closing solo for Lin, performed without the avatar, felt like a deliberate exhale—a reminder that the body alone remains sufficient technology. The ovation was sustained and genuine.
Where to See It
Organizers say they are in discussions with Meta to distribute a stereoscopic VR recording of the showcase through the Meta Quest TV app, target date late June, pricing undetermined. No contract has been signed. For now, the performance exists only in memory, uneven and occasionally dazzling, much like the work itself.
—Emily R. Thompson, Arts & Culture Correspondent
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