60 DANCE MAKERS, ARTISTS, SCIENTISTS, ENGINEERS, ROBOTICISTS AND DIGITAL GAMES MAKERS COLLABORATE TO CREATE THE 1960S INSPIRED PANORAMA: A MULTIMEDIA HAPPENING FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, FROM 5--7:00 P.M. FREE AT UC BERKELEY'S PAULEY BALLROOM 

Campus involvement in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's two--week residency hosted by Cal Performances reaches a crescendo on Friday, November 14 with Panorama: A Multimedia Happening. The free public event will unfold in synchronized looping patterns from 5:00-7:00 p.m. at Pauley Ballroom, located in the Martin Luther King Student Center on the UC Berkeley Campus. Directed by Lisa Wymore of UC Berkeley's Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies (TDPS), Panorama, will use large-- and small--scale projections juxtaposed with live dance, robotic cameras and tele-immersion and audio technologies to draw audience members to participate in the performance at any time. Panorama brings together more than 60 students, artists and scientists from UC Berkeley and other universities. The event honors the pioneering explorations at the heart of the Cunningham--Cage--Rauschenberg legacy. Many of Panorama's co-creators are UC Berkeley faculty who actively pursue multi-faceted research and performance. The happening is presented by Cal Performances in association with Theater, Dance and Performance Studies (TDPS), Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), Center for New Music and Audio Technology (CNMAT). The public event is free.

     At the center of Panorama will be 22 dancers, including UC Berkeley students and members of the dance theater company Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts. The troupe will perform choreographed movement---including excerpts from Merce Cunningham's work---plus movement structures co-authored by computers through a series of algorithms. The performers will also recite text derived from computational models written by Sheldon B. Smith. Robotic cameras developed by Ken Goldberg will capture dancers' movement, a direct reference to Cunningham's 1972 work titled T.V. Rerun. The dancers' movement will also be influenced by a musical score generated from sensor data being streamed live from Zellerbach Hall.

The Panorama promises to be visually and kinesthetically exciting. Audience members will be encouraged to experience the happening from all angles by moving around the performance space and to become part of the event by stepping into one of the two tele-immersion pods to experience virtual touch.

(I'll be there! - Zach)