Get Down at #dancelab

We hope you’re comfortable dancing in public.

Because #dancelab is a unique installation—part of the Denver Art Museum’s summerlong Dance! program—that requires your participation. But you won’t be on your own: The project (which was commissioned by the DAM) was dreamed up by Wonderbound and Legwork Studio, a Denver-based creative studio, and Wonderbound’s dancers will be walking you through the steps. Plus, you won’t totally be in public. You’ll enter a semi-private booth on the DAM’s second floor, where a screen will prompt you to follow the video of a dancer as he or she performs a single movement. There are six kiosks that can be occupied at a time.

Eight Wonderbound dancers pre-recorded movement sequences, which are all rooted in American dance traditions. You’ll be in the booth for about a minute, and artistic director Garrett Ammon notes that it’s all stuff a non-dancer can do.

Individuals’ dances will be collected into a large-format projection, alongside the professional dancers, that will play on the room’s walls, creating a collective dance experience created by DAM visitors. Except it won’t be exactly what you remember doing: Legwork’s incredible technology splices up your video, speeds it up, slows it down, and reorders it for a wholly different visual. These remixed motions will be set to a background score made up of compositions by all Colorado musicians.

Matt FaJohn, a partner at Legwork, says they’ll probably delete the collected video at the end of each day to save memory. Which means you only have a limited amount of time in which to watch yourself dance on the DAM’s walls. For posterity, you can capture the projection on your phone and share it on social media; just be sure to tag it with–you guessed it—#dancelab.

“It has an ephemeral quality to it that it shares with live dance,” Ammon says of the experience. “It’s for the moment.”

You have until July 10, when #dancelab opens, to get some practice in.