Tech Topics
Here to Dance
Choreographer’s yearlong residency at Tech culminates with U.S. premiere of latest work
Story by Leslie Overman
Photo by James K. Holder II
D
ressed in a dark bodysuit with sensors affixed at his joints,
Jonah Bokaer rehearsed choreography as cameras in the
ceiling of the room captured his every move. As data col-
lected by the cameras was compressed, a 3-D avatar on a screen
across from the dancer replicated his movements almost instanta-
neously.
Bokaer, an award-winning choreographer and media artist,
was beginning work on FILTER, a production that will have its
U.S. premiere at the Ferst Center for the Arts on April 2.
He is the first performer to hold the Ferst Center’s ARTech
residency. The program will bring an artist to campus each year
to work with faculty and students in the development of “a new
piece that employs science or technology as an integral part of the
creative development process,” according to the center’s Web site.
Bokaer is making five weeklong visits to campus during the
2010-11 academic year. He spent much of the first two weeks re-
cording choreographic movements in a motion-capture lab in the
Georgia Tech Research Building as Atlanta dance students, profes-
sors and artistic directors watched.
By late January, Bokaer was in rehearsals on the Ferst Center
stage with dancer Adam Weinert, another member of the FILTER
cast. Seated on a couch in the theater’s green room, Bokaer said he
was still unsure how or if the 3-D images created in the motion-
capture lab would appear in FILTER. He seemed surprisingly
at ease considering the world premiere of the work in Avignon,
France, in late February was then just four weeks away.
Bokaer, who studied dance at Cornell and graduated from
the North Carolina School of the Arts, became at 18 the youngest
dancer selected to join the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In
addition to having worked with a number of renowned choreogra-
phers and regularly staging his own productions, Bokaer also has
helped found two performing arts organizations in Brooklyn, N.Y.
In January 2010, he was named among America’s “up-and-
coming talent” in an article titled “The Nifty 50” in The New York
Times Style Magazine.
Ferst Center director George Thompson, once a professional
dancer, approached Bokaer about filling the inaugural ARTech
residency.
“Jonah stood out to me in three ways,” Thompson said. “One,
he is of that age that is forward-thinking and can talk the talk and
walk the walk of a college setting; two, he is a great artist in his
own right and is poised to be a major force in the contemporary
dance arena; and three, his process employs the use of modern
22 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine March/April 2011
technology, and sharing that process with the Georgia Tech and
greater-Atlanta communities was most exciting for me.”
Bokaer said that although he often incorporates new media
into his work, technology’s presence in his performances is not
always obvious.
“My perspective at the moment with a lot of the dance and the-
ater I see is that I’m very attracted to work that integrates media,
sort of like an integrated media production rather than work that
is about the technology,” he said.
The Ferst Center performance of FILTER will be accompanied
by a staging of Bokaer’s 2009 production Replica, a work commis-
sioned by the National Academy of Sciences that explores memory
loss and pattern recognition.
“Replica is a duet, but it plays with the self, the image and
copying, sort of copying phrases and movement,” Bokaer said. “In
FILTER, we have more people on stage … and the concept, as well
as the creative process, deals with the way that material is staged,
filtered, et cetera.
“There’s a lot of questions coming up these days about the title
and how that came about. Filtering material happens in motion
capture, it happens in animation, it happens in drawing, it hap-
pens in creating digital imagery and playing with light intensity,
color.”
During his residency, Bokaer has been working with School of
Music assistant professor Jason Freeman and College of Comput-
ing graduate student Stephen Garrett to create Mass Mobile, a
smart phone application that may allow theatergoers to influence
the lighting or video design of FILTER.
Despite his limited time on campus, Bokaer has ventured be-
yond the Tech labs and the Ferst Center stage during his trips to
the Institute. He said education and community engagement have
been a focus of each week of the residency, which has included
stops at Grady High School, Emory University and Centennial
Place Elementary to lead dance workshops for students.
“I think that ARTech and George Thompson are raising the bar
for what a residency can be. A lot of choreographers in New York
are faced with the question of can they work in the same space
every day,” Bokaer said. “But I think what’s interesting about
ARTech is that there have been five phases of working, and I think
that partnering with a university in this way has been very enrich-
ing for the dance that we’re trying to make, the continuity, but also
the kinds of resources that are available. It’s been great.”
To see a video of Bokaer’s work in the motion-capture lab or purchase
tickets for the 8 p.m. April 2 performance of FILTER at Georgia Tech, visit
ferstcenter.gatech.edu.
 March/April 2011 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine 23