Did you know the word robot has only existed for a hundred years? Strange when you realise that artificial humans and mechanical automatons have been devised and made since antiquity. Today, our society would be nothing without robots. Expectations are that around the year 2030, more than 800 million jobs and functions will have been taken over by robots.

Choreographer and dancer Ugo Dehaes questions this evolution by investigating how he can replace his dancers by robots and himself by artificial intelligence. This show offers a close-up experience of how robots originate, evolve, learn to move and organise themselves. Slowly, Ugo’s robots evolve from fish to caterpillars and beetles, until finally they create their own dance performance. In Simple Machines we catch a glimpse of a future world without human bodies. But is that the direction we want things to go?

About the maker
Choreographer Ugo Dehaes has made many shows about the power of dance and dancers. Lately, he has been working with robots instead of dancers. His research focuses on the question if robots can dance just as well as humans, and if they can come up with their own choreographies. It’s a dangerous road to travel; before you know it, the robots may have taken over his job …