STALACTITES
Midtown Arts and Theater Complex Houston, Theater 2⠀
Premiered in August 2024
Check out Kerri Lyons Neimeyer’s
Write Up Here
About Stalactites
NobleMotion entered season 16 with Stalactites, a mysterious new evening of dance theater that premiered at the MATCH in late August 2024. Set in a futuristic primal society, Stalactites draws inspiration from Plato’s allegory of the cave as a response to current advances in AI technology. The theater is transformed into an industrial cave with climbable architectural structures designed by Jared Doster. The light grid is lowered into the performance space allowing light designer Bryan Ealey to shape the world as the dancers perform above the fixtures. And a new hour-long music score by Travis Lake haunts and renders beautiful a hollow world full of possibility. Stalactites is a physical and evocative evening-length performance that offers a glimpse into one possible future of human “progress.”
Throughout time, the cave has been a mystical place, an opening into earth where humans have found shelter, given birth, performed rituals and burial rites, and told stories. Co-Artistic Director Andy Noble states, “Fresh off our tour to the United Nations’ ‘AI for Good’ Global Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, Dionne and I were both inspired and terrified by the developing AI capabilities. We heard many talks about the application of AI to help solve the world’s challenges. But it was a talk by Tristan Harris (Co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology) about lack of funding for AI governance that has inspired much of this evening’s themes.” AI, simply put, amplifies human desires, both positive and negative. The same technology that acts as an educational tool for child learning can also act as an educational weapon for terrorist activity. The cave stands artistically parallel to the future of AI—one that has long preceded us and one that might long outlast us. It offers a window into the earth’s past and by association, a map of human history. The futuristic industrial cave world of Stalactites not only speaks to environmental concerns on the horizon for humanity, but to a world where the governance of AI technology is outpaced by the primal needs and desires that have characterized the homo sapiens species: exploration, expansion, and exploitation.
Plato’s allegory of the cave in The Republic sheds philosophical insight into this confusing yet pivotal moment in time. As our eyes are fixed forward, unable to turn, we ignorantly race headfirst into the unknown shadow that is AI without governance oversight, tethering us to a reality that we have yet to understand. Even the most advanced AI researchers do not fully comprehend AI’s potentiality. We sit in a dark cave, devoid of light, creating god-like technology bound by sticks and rope.
Although we are a company that often employs cutting-edge technology in a live-performance setting, we have opted to make an evening without it. Instead, we dance in our simplest form and reveal AI’s true inspiration, us.
Collaborators include movement artists Dillon Bell, Wesley Cordova, Deontay Gray, Kalli Loudan, Sheena Kapila, Lindsey McGill, Maria Perez, Tyler Orcutt, Jacob Regan, Lauren Serrano, Angelica Villa, dance artists from NobleMotion 2, light designer Bryan Ealey, composer Travis Lake, and industrial designer Jared Doster.
