Winter Speaker Series 2025: Sydney Skybetter
February 15, 2025 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm At the Museum and Virtually on Vimeo
Clock, Fall: A Brief History and Speculative Future of Dancing Murder Robots
Sydney Skybetter is an expert in choreorobotics, a portmanteau of choreography and robotics, and a field which he has pioneered at the interdisciplinary intersection of choreographic theory and robotic motion planning. Choreorobotics offers a rich, critical aperture to consider how bodies in motion – human or otherwise – move through space and time to generate meaning. In Clock, Fall, Skybetter dives into the origin of choreorobotics, recent advancements in the field, and how emerging technologies can be informed or disrupted by collective action and coalition building, drawing from his work as the founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces and podcast, “Dances with Robots.” In this presentation, Skybetter will cover topics ranging from Boston Dynamics robots, Tesla’s “Party Mode” and Optimus robots, parasitic aesthetic theory, the movie M3GAN, Artificial Intelligence, and a little bit of Beyoncé.
The lecture will be held in person at the Museum and virtually on Vimeo, and will be followed by audience Q&A and tea reception.
Lecture recording will be available to subscribers and ticket holders.
About our Speaker
Sydney Skybetter is a choreographer. Hailed by the Financial Times as “One of the world’s foremost thinkers on the intersection of dance and emerging technologies,” Sydney’s choreography has been performed at such venues as The Kennedy Center and Jacob’s Pillow. He has lectured at SXSW, Yale, Mozilla and the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, and consulted for The National Ballet of Canada, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Hasbro, and The University of Southern California, among others. His work has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and a Creative Capital “Wild Futures” Award. He is a Senior Affiliate of metaLAB at Harvard University, a frequent contributor to WIRED and Dance Magazine, the Founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces and Host of the podcast, “Dances with Robots.” Sydney serves as the Faculty Director of the Brown Arts Institute, is an Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, and was the first choreographer at Brown University to receive tenure.
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WINTER SPEAKER SERIES CORPORATE SPONSORS
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WINTER SPEAKER SERIES INDIVIDUAL SPONSORS
Lockett Ford Ballard, Jr.
Johanna Becker
Gabe & Eleanor Doumato
Angela Fischer
Mary M. Jennings Fund
Kathleen & Joseph Gallichio
Robert & Susan Kieronski
Chas A. Miller III
Santiago & Maureen Neville
Edwina Sebest
Cynthia Sinclair
Brian Zanghi
In-Kind Sponsors
Winter Speaker Series Committee
Johanna Becker, Chair
Eleanor Doumato
Joseph Gallichio
Susan Kieronski
Santiago Neville
Contact Susan Hanley, Senior Advisor Sponsor & Donor Engagement at 631-599-1950 (shanley@newportartmuseum.org) for more information on sponsoring the Winter Speaker Series.
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