Tag Archives: Tron

iLuminate, uLuminate, we all Luminate for dance

My head(line) is a bit weak, the original line I’m paraphrasing being ‘I scream, You scream, We all scream for ice cream’ but I’m pressed for time today and I want to get this piece about dance, software, and iLuminate posted.

David Zax features an interview with iLuminate founder, Miral Kotb, in his June 15, 2012 article on the Fast Company website,

Miral Kotb is the entrepreneur behind iLuminate, a wearable lighting system that enables novel dance acts. The iLuminate dance team placed third in last season’s America’s Got Talent, and has opened two new shows in Six Flags theme parks this month. We spoke with Kotb to talk about Tron, the Royal Dutch Air Force, and whether Mark Zuckerberg secretly break-dances.

FAST COMPANY: For those who didn’t see it yet on America’s Got Talent, what’s iLuminate?

MIRAL KOTB: It’s a new technology in which dancers have these illuminated costumes on their body that I can control wirelessly. The lights turn on and off with the music, and there’s choreography to match what they’re doing. We can bring a lot of illusions to life that you couldn’t do otherwise.

Here’s a bit about her dance influences,

What are your other influences? Tron comes to mind.

Apple definitely influenced me. William Forsythe, the choreographer [venerable and long gone, British choreographer]. Other dance companies, like Momix and Pilobolus. And definitely my work at Bloomberg [she was a senior software engineer for the company]. A lot of the software involved is very similar to trading. It’s very time-controlled, with a lot of networking involved.

I have found videos for both Pilobolus and Momix. Having seen Pilobolus perform I can say the video does not fully convey the visceral pleasure of watching one of their performances and I imagine the same is true of Momix performance. Still, it’s what we’ve got for now,

Pilobolus:

Momix:

I gather the big breakthrough (although they have worked for a number of major pop stars)  for iLuminate was on the television programme, America’s Got Talent. Here’s the video from their first performance on the show,

I think I’ll have to see a live performance. While this looks interesting, I don’t experience this video as a dance performance so much as I experience it as a spectacle o f lights.

There are more iLuminate videos and information in Zax’s article. You can also find the iLuminate company website here.