Oh Great, The Nazis Were Into Modern Dance: A Conversation with Kate Gow

Kate Gow, CRCI’s archivist and web designer, sits down with host Sydney Skybetter to discuss historical intersections of dance and technology. Turns out that the weird history of dancers catching on fire, Degas, and the Nazis have a lot to do with the dance of the future.

About Kate:

Kate Gow is an archivist and designer of digital spaces. Her work revolves around memory, the body, and how we interact and perform with technology. She graduated as valedictorian from The Boston Conservatory, pioneering the Conservatory's first emphasis in Dance & Technology. In her sixth year with CRCI, she is moved to document the conference that unveiled to her the power and significance of artistic intelligence. You can find her in performance and behind the scenes as a Senior Professional Services Consultant at Quadient.

Read the transcript, and find more resources in our archive: 

https://www.are.na/choreographicinterfaces/dwr-ep-2-oh-great-the-nazis-were-into-modern-dance-a-conversation-with-kate-gow

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What We Discuss with Kate (Timestamps):

0:00:00: Introduction to guest Kate Gow

0:01:52: Kate's experience with fan blogging and writing fan fiction

0:05:17: Kate's multifaceted career in dance, choreography, teaching, and technology

0:06:16: The connection between movement, coding, and processing information

0:08:46: The importance of looking back at past mistakes in history

0:10:01: The evolution of dance technology and its impact on the art form

0:11:52: The focus on harm and the intersection of emerging technologies & the body

0:13:23: Being recorded and loss of control over what is seen

0:15:24: Who gets to make decisions about dance and technology

0:18:01: Choreographer Rudolph von Laban's collaboration with Nazis and dance history

0:21:09: Labanotation influence in robotics and other fields

0:23:29: Movement analysis of foreign leaders and body language consulting

0:26:10: Dancers seek stability in corporate collaborations for financial security

0:28:17: How Kate as a ballet teacher fosters agency in students.

0:30:26: Dance history provides lessons on the importance of bodies in technology.

0:32:07: Teaching consent and embodied interaction with technology through dance.

0:33:51: TikTok's algorithmic bias and the erasure of marginalized bodies.

0:35:00: Examining biases in technology through the lens of dance history.

0:37:47: Show credits & thanks

The Dances with Robots Team Host: Sydney Skybetter Co-Host & Executive Producer: Ariane Michaud Archivist and Web Designer: Kate Gow Podcasting Consultant: Megan Hall Accessibility Consultant: Laurel Lawson Music: Kamala Sankaram Audio Production Consultant: Jim Moses Assistant Editor: Andrew Zukoski Student Associate: Rishika Kartik

About CRCI

The Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI) explores the braid of choreography, computation and surveillance through an interdisciplinary lens. Find out more at www.choreographicinterfaces.org

Brown University's Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies' Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces thanks the Marshall Woods Lectureships Foundation of Fine Arts, the Brown Arts Institute, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their generous support of this project.

The Brown Arts Institute and the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies are part of the Perelman Arts District.