Dancing with the Digital Dervish: Example of Digital Media/Theatre and Performance
Dancing with the Digital Dervish has been called an "immersive environment," (Birringer, Performance, Technology, & Science, 143) and one of the "earliest and most influential examples" (David Saltz, "Performing Arts," 126) of using 3D in relation to movement-based performance pieces, or dance. The piece is set apart by Jay Bolter, et.al. (35) for revealing rather than concealing its "own representational techniques," and thus creating a non-auratic, reflective experience for the user.
It is also a great example of collaboration in the digital humanities-side of theatre and performance: "Working with Sharir, who is a choreographer and computer scientist, Gromala constructs an environment from computer-based visualizations of her own body which she manipulated and animated to represent decay and reformation" (Cat Hope, "Dancing at the Speed of Light," 89).
The longest analysis can be found in Mark Hansen's account of the piece, which he positions as an attempt to contrast Virtual Reality to the "rhetoric of disembodiment
and transcendence so frequently associated with it." (New Philosophy for New Media, 178) He goes on to quote the choreographer Diane Gromala: "Recent media frenzies about virtual reality portray these technologies as promising a brave new world … What if, instead, we explore this notion turned in on itself our travels not to an abstract virtual 'outer' space, but to the inner reaches of our body?" (quoted in Hansen, (New Philosophy for New Media, 178)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIQw_QTshLU