The Music Center in collaboration with Pilobolus and MIT, will soon present UP! The Umbrella Project, a free community arts and participatory learning experience designed to connect strangers through a shared focus on movement, shape and beauty.
Participants will become part of the creative process in a large-scale, live nighttime event using LED umbrellas. Based on prompts, participants will create different configurations by changing the colors of their MIT-designed umbrellas, showcasing a shifting landscape of brightly colored figures within a one-hour session.
“Audience members wield lighted umbrellas in a large-scale, live performance piece created in collaboration with MIT. As participants change the color of their umbrellas the collective landscape of colored bodies shifts. Shown in real-time via a bird’s-eye-view projection, the view is stunning, colorful, and a visual indication of the “whole” indeed being greater than the sum of its parts.“
The Music Center’s large LED screens on Jerry Moss Plaza will display the colors, patterns and shapes so participants can see their movements in real time.
Since 1971, Pilobolus Dance Company has tested the limits of human physicality to explore the beauty and the power of connected bodies.
The company reaches beyond performance to teach people how to connect through designed live experiences and expert storytelling that show diverse communities how to maximize group creativity, solve problems and generate joy through the power of nonverbal communication.
UP! was created in a collaboration between Pilobolus and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory.
WHEN:
Thursday, October 21, Friday, October 22 and Saturday, October 23, 2021 – Each day at both 8:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
WHERE:
Jerry Moss Plaza at The Music Center
135 N. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
FREE RSVP:
Attendance is free, but reservations are required for the 60-minute experience at https://musiccenter.org/up.
Timed-entry participation must be reserved in advance for one of the two sessions available each date; space is limited to the first 100 guests per session. Masks are required for all participants, regardless of vaccination status.
Pilobolus Artistic Director Matt Kent and Daniela Rus, Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, will illuminate the story and science behind their collaboration on Pilobolus’ UP! The Umbrella Project.
The discussion will explore the fusion of body and brain, the connection between individual and collective creativity, and the relationships between people working together, machines working together and the algorithms leading to a shared artistic experience among people meeting for the first time.
This live, virtual conversation will be free to the public on Tuesday, October 19, 2021, at 6:00 p.m. PT.
