Dancing with Computers | Analivia Cordeiro

Since the early 1970s, Analivia Cordeiro has used code to translate dance into digital experiences that foster dialogue, in her own words, “between rules and freedom.”¹ Trained in Rudolf von Laban’s system of movement analysis and influenced by the Bauhaus, New Tendencies, and concrete art, of which her father Waldemar was a leading proponent, Cordeiro’s career stands as a radical rejection of the masculinist fantasy of a technologized society. 

Conceived against the backdrop of Brazil’s military dictatorship, the artist’s trio of early computer-choreographed dances, M 3×3 (1973), 0=45 (1974), and Cambiantes (1976), feel as radical today as they did 50 years ago, exploring the machine aesthetics of modernism in a way that allowed for improvisation within a rule-based environment. In his catalog essay for LACMA’s 2023 exhibition, “Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age: 1952-1982,” Edward Shanken described M 3×3, which is generally regarded as the first work of video art in Brazil (created when the artist was just 19 years old), as “a revolutionary act that violates gendered and geopolitical divides: that men program machines and women dance to those cyborg dreams, and that technological (and artistic) innovation emerges in the northwest quadrant of the globe, which colonizes the rest.”² 

In recent years, following the success of the crypto art movement, many of whose members herald from Latin America, Cordeiro has returned to the fore, releasing new works such as MUTATIO - Impossible to Control just Contribute (2024) just as artists such as Operator have reimagined generative performance. At a time when algorithms are reshaping human behavior on a planetary scale, Cordeiro’s work reveals the capacity of human bodies to find space within technological systems. Here, the artist and her long-standing collaborator Nilton Lobo discuss how dance can preserve humanity in an age of data bodies with Alex Estorick.‍

Alex Estorick: It seems to me that one of your singular contributions, beyond exploring the movement of organic bodies within mechanized systems, is creating performances that activate viewers. But can digital experiences ever be embodied experiences or is there still a separation?‍

Analivia Cordeiro: There is no separation. The digital experience of body language is the best because, from the very beginning, there is the challenge of writing movement the same way we write words — to communicate and exchange messages. We can only do this through digital technology. Humanity has tried this before. Rudolf von Laban tried, Benesh and Noa Eshkol also tried, but writing movement with a pencil or pen becomes impossible because movement is so rich and full of detail. It is very difficult for the eye to capture the whole body at once. 

I began thinking about a friendship between technology and the body — never in opposition [but] something more like a feedback loop.‍

Vladimir Bonačić, also a mathematician, taught me about random choice when he came to Brazil in 1971 for the Arteônica exhibition, which was organized by my father Waldemar Cordeiro. I was 17 years old, and we talked a lot about art and computer programming. He became my friend, as did Herbert Franke. I was very young and they gave me strength to continue, especially after my father’s death. I was a very good dancer and specialized in improvisation from the very beginning. When I went to New York I worked as a solo dancer, not because I was technically good but because I improvised very well — I had an easy-going exchange with the public.

AE: In your algorithmic practice, randomness plays a role. I’m wondering whether there is a relationship between randomness and improvisation?‍

AC: It plays a fundamental role. Improvisation is like giving others a chance to really see you and how you react to things, even how you think. I try out a movement: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I remember once I was doing an improvisation in a church in New York, and I made a very strong movement. I was surprised when three people in the front row lowered their gaze, as if protecting themselves, even though I wasn’t doing anything dangerous. I thought, “Well, this works.” Sometimes you try a movement, you get feedback and then follow that direction. Sometimes, you realize you should change course.

Random choice is like improvisation. There’s a range of possible elements — movements or positions you might choose or not. But it follows the same principle: sometimes it works well for the body, sometimes not.

‍Improvisation and random choice both deal with the unpredictable. The difference is that improvisation is deeply organic and flows harmonically. Random choice is mainly chaotic and never organically constructed. They complement each other.

Analivia Cordeiro, 0=45 version V (remake of version II), 1974/2024. © Analivia Cordeiro

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AE: Are there any works that you think of particularly in relation to improvisation?‍

AC: My first three works from the 1970s are precisely that. The computer program used random choices to generate bodily positions. To perform the dance, the performer had to link these positions to create movement [but] the connections between positions were left open; that’s where improvisation came in.

In 2024, I decided to remake one of my dances from 1974 — 50 years on. I danced it the same way I did back then. I also created a new version by asking a street dancer, Mia Omori, to perform the choreography using the original notation, and we made two videos of the same score. The body positions are the same, but the connections between them differ, so the result is two different dances. To my surprise, I won the Best Choreography award at the Japan Film Critics Award after they discovered the work on YouTube. This shows the kind of intelligence embedded in this form of interpretation. 

‍Improvisation, when combined with computer-generated instructions, never gets old — it can always evolve and be renewed.

There is a bodily intelligence that good athletes have, that good dancers have, and also many others. Sometimes you see a housewife cooking and she has it too.

‍AE: You’re talking about a kind of intuitive bodily coordination?‍

AC: Yes, it’s complex because it’s coordination with strength and timing. But motion capture never shows the strength of the movements, it only shows the displacement of the body parts in time and space. When we began to do motion capture in the beginning, we produced thousands of pieces of paper, each as individual frames of a film with all 24 points representing the main articulations of the body, including information about whether the arms were in front or behind. Then we were able to generate the 3D form from the 2D information, revealing the displacement in time and space. 

But we never used interpolation. When you have a movement like a right angle, which is sharp and expressive, the interpolation destroys the expression of sharpness. We have been dealing with such problems from the very beginning.

AE: You’ve been collaborating with Nilton Lobo since the 1980s to translate movement into a notation system, Nota-Anna. How has your collaboration evolved over time?‍

AC: When we began experimenting with motion capture in the 1980s, we were among the first in the world to do so. Our goal was to bring movement into the computer so it could be processed. The idea we had back then has only recently become reality because for a long time the tools weren’t good enough to allow people to exchange messages through body language in the way we exchange words.‍

Nilton Lobo: Since the very beginning — 42 years ago — Analivia kept insisting that we needed to invite people to use technology. At the time, it was very difficult. Computers were huge and inaccessible. Even when PCs became more common, it wasn’t easy.

‍Analivia always cared about how to invite people to interact with technology in a way that felt invisible and didn’t interfere with their movements but rather encouraged people to move and create. Her priority has always been with moving people.

AC: I started dancing very young, and I love teaching children. I saw how technology could change their emotional lives over the course of their development. I’ve seen how technology can act as a filter, and often a wall, between the person and the world. 

‍Because of the ways technology imposes how to communicate, a person — especially a girl — can close herself off, then her body closes: shoulders, then her back, then her neck. I’ve witnessed this whole transformation.‍

AE: You’ve recently developed an app that allows people to share their movements. Can you explain this evolution of your practice?‍

AC: We recently launched an app, BodyWays, as a social communication tool for people to exchange information through their bodies. When I arrived at the NVIDIA GTC 2025 conference in San Jose, California, I was surprised to find myself sitting next to researchers working on cancer detection, ecological issues, and other fields. I have the mind of an artist, but they saw this work as a social communication tool.‍

NL: BodyWays allows you to create, capture, and send your movements. You capture your motion, then you choose how to visualize it: color, background — any background you like. It could be a photo or an algorithmic image. Then you choose the sound and share it with someone. You can alter the different forms of visualization, then you can record it and send it to others. The tool is available on the App Store and on Google Play.

Analivia Cordeiro, M 3x3, 1973. Processed at Centro de Computação da UNICAMP and recorded at the studios of TV Cultura in São Paulo. © Analivia Cordeiro

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AE: There seems to be both a geometrical, concrete aesthetic in your work and also an embodied, organic quality. Is this a conflict?‍

AC: For me, there is no conflict: I bring those things together. Can you believe that when I see a work of concrete art [originally envisioned as mechanical and devoid of sensuality] I feel emotion? 

‍20 years ago, art and freedom were partners. Now, art is partnered with money, and there are people who say, “we don’t understand about art, that’s for the elite.” 

When people do art at home, they relate it to happiness or, sometimes, especially when teenagers, to express something that they cannot say in words, even something like depression. This is when art becomes really serious. Culture gets into your neurological system. 

When I was six months old, my father hung an Alexander Calder replica over my crib. When I was five, I was making concrete paintings at home — I was neurologically prepared. My father would say, “Analivia, please sit down, draw here quietly for two minutes.” But I was not drawing a house, a dog, a car, and a tree. I was drawing what I saw around me, which allows me to say that while school teaches you, life teaches much more.

AE: Let’s talk about Cambiantes, which was based on your study of the Kamayurá tribe.‍

AC: I lived with the Kamayurá in the Amazon for a few months, observing and recording their dances from an anthropological perspective. I discovered that, for them, dance is integrated with music, ritual, and daily life. I learned a lot, because they can listen and see better than we can; they are more sensitive. I stayed with them for months without speaking their language and I’ve never felt so well in my entire life.

When I came back, I used their body paintings as inspiration for my computer dance Cambiantes. I learnt so much from them, but it’s difficult to say in words. 

‍The experience with the Kamayurá was amazing precisely because they have one single reality, one whole, one world.

AE: You’ve talked about how modern urban life dismembers the body, and your work seems to explore both wholeness and dismemberment.‍

AC: I am talking about this dismemberment and how little people know about their own body. When you use technology every day, you suffer in some way. When you sit in front of a computer or monitor for hours, fixed in one position, your body suffers but you can’t admit it, because you need your salary and you need to meet your deadlines. You get used to listening only to your mind.

For many people, the body exists only to support the head. The head is where everything happens — the legs just move it around. The back is for lying down when the head rests. But people forget they have a whole body and that body can speak. ‍‍

‍AE: As we look to the future, we’re seeing our physical bodies being mapped into data bodies. Are you concerned about this translation of the physical body into the digital?‍

AC: It’s a societal shift. The solution is to find ways to play the game, to find spaces between the data where you can express yourself without external control.

AE: How do you see the relationship between human creativity and AI?‍

AC: In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan predicted that with the advent of technology, people would have more free time — less work and more freedom to pursue what they love. When the internet arrived in the 1990s, I witnessed the overwhelming flood of information people began receiving daily. Instead of gaining time for themselves to feel happy or fulfilled, something else happened. Work time decreased, yes, but people became enslaved by the internet. They spent hours trying to keep up with endless content. This gave rise to widespread dissatisfaction and depression. 

When I say that “the great game is finding the empty space between the rules technology imposes,” I’m mostly talking about AI. But there is one area that it hasn’t yet touched and that is the world of subtle and spontaneous body language. AI might give you tips to improve your skateboarding, but only your body can actually do it. You might fake it in a video, but you’ll know it’s not real. AI will never teach you to laugh spontaneously, to respond to surprise, or to show affection to someone special. 

‍I see body language as a vast, open space for development if one has the courage to be spontaneous, pure, and childlike in expression. That is how one finds the cracks through which individuality can still emerge.

AI might open space to discover other human capacities that go beyond control and rationality, which were once essential to intellectual creation. In the post-AI era, body language may gain new and profound cultural value. As one of the pioneers of motion capture in the early 1980s, I know what movement reveals and what still remains unexplored, which are the subtlest gestures and most refined emotional expressions. 

AE: Is your work in some sense about surviving technology?‍

AC: I believe that technology is a great human invention. But it depends on its use. I don’t see a conflict between technology and the body — I see collaboration. My work encourages people to move, because to move is to feel alive. Without movement, the body dies. Certain movements can also change people. One example occurred at LACMA…‍

NL: We were doing an exercise, part of M 3×3 (1973), that included motion capture. There was a girl participating in our workshop whose mother had recently had a stroke but who didn’t have anyone to take care of her, so she attended the workshop in a wheelchair. She was sitting in the audience, watching everything, but when we started to do the motion-capture exercise, the participants wanted to involve her and put her in front of the camera.‍

AC: When the mother, who couldn’t move because of the stroke, saw herself moving on the screen — because the system was interpreting even the smallest movements she could make — she started crying with happiness because she realized she could still move and could still express herself through movement, even in her condition. This is what I mean about finding spaces within the technology. 

‍That technology wasn’t designed for someone with a stroke, but we found a way to make it work for her. She found a way to move again, to feel alive again through the digital representation of her body.

AE: That example seems to perfectly illustrate your view of technology as a tool for liberation rather than limitation.‍

AC: That is what I’ve been doing for 52 years — finding spaces of possibility that technology doesn’t know it has. The machine has limitations, but the human body, the human spirit, always finds a way to exceed those limitations, to surprise even itself. That is why I’m not worried about the future of technology and the body. As long as there are humans, there will be space in between where we can play, where we can express, and where we can survive.