The UNAM Choreographic Workshop experiments with Mozart, AI and dance

The Choreographic Workshop of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (TCUNAM), created in 1970 with the purpose of forming a dance and experimentation laboratory, will offer two functions of the program today Requiem-AI, in which the Eduardo Mata University Youth Orchestra (Ojuem) and the Staccato Choir participate, in the Miguel Covarrubias room of the University Cultural Center.

The public will be able to see the university group as part of the El Aleph Festival. The piece Mozart’s Requiem, by the teacher Gloria Contreras (1934-2015), will be the first work on the Choreographic Workshop program, and the second proposal they will present is the work in progress Misa en IA, with choreography by Irina Marcano and Arturo Vázquez.

For the second work, an experimentation was carried out with Mozart’s music and artificial intelligence (AI), in which the composer Jaime Lobato and a team from the Mathematics Institute of the highest educational institution participated.

Experimental process

In interview with The Day, The director of TCUNAM, Irina Marcano, explained that her presentation at El Aleph links art, science and AI. “We made a scenic approach made up of two pieces. The program starts with the classic Mozart’s Requiem, one of Maestro Contreras’ most beloved choreographies, and we are going to enjoy it accompanied by orchestra and choir.

In the second part, we experiment with a wonderful group of composers, mathematicians and scientists led by Jaime Lobato, for which we take Mozart’s score in order to do mathematical work on algorithms, an experimentation with AI, rethinking this classic composition; At the same time, with the result of the AI ​​I made a new choreography. It is a short piece, it is only composed of three movements, according to the patterns that the AI ​​gave us when analyzing the unfinished score of the Austrian composer; Then we combine everything.

Marcano added that the proposal Mass in AI it’s a work in progress, through which the public attending the Miguel Covarrubias room will see an approach to experimentation with AI, dance and music.

About the creative process of Mass in AI, The director of the company commented: “Normally, choreographers create hand in hand with music, and in this case it was a challenge and I loved it, because it was about leaving the comfort zone and starting to create from other places. It was all very interesting, since I had never had a scientific approach to these aspects. The learning was great and we achieved experimentation and construction from another place.

I feel that the experience is neither good nor bad, it is simply different, and, as artists, doing things differently makes us grow and learn a lot, so the process was very valuable.

With Lobato and his team, Marcano explained, We worked together from the beginning. They made their approach, they began to digitize these processes, the AI ​​returned some numerical data that they shared with me and we both worked with the result of these.

A huge luxury

The choreographer pointed out that in the end it was a work of human and artificial intelligence, in which the decisions about the stylistic concepts that the AI ​​produced and the direction of learning were made as a team. She also said that in the second movement of the work in progress There was the support of Arturo Vázquez, TCUNAM teacher and coordinator of Gloria Contreras’ repertoire.

It is a beautiful show, because in the first part, teacher Gloria’s choreography will be accompanied by choir and orchestra; It is an enormous luxury that makes your skin crawl. In the second part we will have the new fruits of experimentation by linking art and science, but having as a starting point the emblematic repertoire of the founder of the Choreographic Workshop.

The program Requiem-AI with the UNAM Choreographic Workshop, with the artistic direction of Irina Marcano, will be presented this Sunday at 12:30 and 6 p.m. in the Miguel Covarrubias room of the University Cultural Center, located at Insurgentes Sur 3000, Ciudad Universitaria.