Dancing with machines: humanoid robots and techno-choreographic co-agency

Xu, Z ORCID: 0000-0002-7819-4517 (2026) Dancing with machines: humanoid robots and techno-choreographic co-agency. In: TaPRA Conference 2026, 2-4 September 2026, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK. (Forthcoming)

Abstract

This paper examines two recent humanoid robot dance performances that have circulated widely through international media. Building on my theorisation of techno-choreography in Dancing Chineseness and Techno-Choreography, I analyse how these works reconfigure choreographic agency through the interaction of human dancers, engineers, code, and robotic bodies. Rather than treating technology as a neutral instrument, I position the robot as a structural force that reorganises the conditions of performance itself. Instead of celebrating robots as equal creative partners, I interrogate the conditions under which machinic performance is framed as co-creation. In these works, humanoid robots execute complex folk dance sequences through motion capture mapping, frame by frame coding, and algorithmic calibration. Their technical precision, repeatability, and capacity for extreme rotational speed exceed certain human physical limits. Yet this apparent virtuosity prompts deeper questions about embodiment, authorship, and the redistribution of labour within technologically mediated choreography. I argue that the introduction of humanoid robots into heritage-based dance forms produces a productive tension between mechanical reproduction and embodied cultural memory. While robots can replicate visible movement patterns with high accuracy, they do not participate in the lived rhythmic sensibility, historical resonance, or communal transmission that sustain such practices. What emerges is not a seamless human–machine collaboration, but a reorganisation of choreographic hierarchy in which technological spectacle risks overshadowing cultural meaning. By situating these performances within posthuman performance discourse, this paper critically examines what is at stake when machinic systems enter culturally specific dance contexts. It proposes that techno-choreography must account not only for distributed agency, but also for asymmetries of knowledge, cultural depth, and embodied experience. In doing so, the paper complicates celebratory narratives of human and more-than-human co-creation and offers a more critically grounded framework for analysing robotic performance.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Divisions:	School of Music and Performing Arts
Date Deposited:	28 Aug 2026 17:39
Last Modified:	28 Aug 2026 17:43
URN:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/17922

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