Arcos to Premiere Transmedia Performance DOMAIN at International Symposium

ARCOS Dance has been commissioned to create a new evening-length work to premiere at Engagement: Symposium of Philosophy and Dance, an international performance conference hosted by Texas State University in San Marcos also featuring performances by the companies of modern dance pioneers Mark Morris and ERick Hawkins. The new work, entitled Domain, will premiere at 7:30pm on September 10, and 2pm on September 11, 2016 in the Patti Strickel Harrison Theatre (405 Moon St.) at Texas State University.

ARCOS follows their historical memoir The Warriors: A Love Story with a science-fiction thriller, Domain. The transmedia performance follows the life of Jonah, an unorthodox inventor who is diagnosed with a terminal illness as she accepts a prize for designing ANNI, an advanced Artificial Intelligence. Suddenly faced with her mortality, Jonah appears to come unmoored from reality, jumping between past, present, and future in fractured scenes that take the form of surreal dances. The story is framed by conversations between the human, unsure whether this bizarre state is a symptom of her disease, and the Artificial Intelligence, who longs to understand how humans identify signal in the noise and assign meaning to the chaos of their universe.

ARCOS welcomes Austin actor, improviser, and visual artist Indigo Rael in the lead role of Jonah. Some of her artwork will be featured on domain.arcosdance.com in the form of character sketched scenes and notes.

Transmedia storytelling originated in the entertainment industry in recent decades to articulate a single, extended narrative across multiple formats. Director Erica Gionfriddo says ARCOS intends "to appropriate this strategy, reaching out and grabbing people through the digital interfaces where we are all spending more of our time to cultivate a deeper human connection with our performance." In the case of Domain, live and online events have been happening since early June in communities including Austin, TX , Santa Fe, NM, Kansas City, MO, Denton, TX, Nebraska City, NE, and Billings, MT, where fragments of the story have been revealed. Audiences everywhere are invited to immerse themselves in the world of the piece before and after the theatrical premiere at DOMAIN.ARCOSDANCE.COM, an online archive of early chapters of the narrative, character backstories, sketches, drawings, and other entries give audiences anywhere an experience of the piece regardless of whether they have experienced one of the live performances.

An interactive installation, a real-world incarnation of the Artificial Intelligence ANNI, will be available for audiences to interact with in the lobby of the Patti Strickel Harrison Theatre during the Engagement Symposium on September 8-10 from 6-7:30pm and September 11 from 12:30-1:30pm.

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