The Movement Project was selected as a 2024 Knight New Work grantee, an initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that supports artists and organizations in Akron, Miami, and Detroit who are using technology to innovate how art is created, shared, and experienced.

Originally proposed as techMOVES: the cyclical relationship in creative practice, the project has since evolved into codemoves: weaving technology in the creative practice.

Over the past 18 months, The Movement Project, led by TMP associate director Elyse Morckel, together with core collaborators Lauren Bedal (Los Angeles, CA) and Miryam G. Johnson (Detroit, MI), has been investigating how AI technologies can support and expand choreographic practice. Through ongoing exploration, experimentation, ideation, and questioning, the team has examined how these tools can both enhance existing creative processes and open new possibilities for movement based artists. This work has been heavily influenced by community feedback gathered through an open survey of dancers, choreographers, and creative technologists conducted during the first phase of the project.

The project’s goal was to develop a suite of hybrid tools that are accessible to choreographers without technical backgrounds, while also demonstrating their creative potential through rehearsals to performance. As the project unfolded we developed more clarity around the goals of:

1. Cultivating a foundation of general education for the dance community regarding the nuances of AI technology;

2. Establishing a suite of frameworks and web-based tools that empower artists to explore the integration of AI within their choreographic process.