Intersections: A Dance Symposium

dance, AI, and the future of movement—artist talks, Q&A, coffee & pastries at MIT W97.

Intersections: A Dance Symposium

April 22nd and 23rd at W97

April 22- 11a-1p W97- 110 

Silas Reiner, of Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener

Silas Riener is a graduate of Princeton University and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 2007-2012. He has performed with Chantal Yzermans, Takehiro Ueyama, Christopher Williams, Joanna Kotze, Jonah Bokaer, Rebecca Lazier, Tere O'Connor, Wally Cardona, and Kota Yamazaki. His own work has been curated at EMPAC, The Chocolate Factory, LMCC's River to River Festival, The Serpentine Pavillion, and Danspace Project. His ongoing collaboration with artist Martha Friedman has resulted in works at Andrea Rosen Gallery 2, The Henry Museum, Locust Projects Miami, and Jessica Silverman Gallery.

Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener are New York-based dance artists. Their work involves the building of collaborative worlds through improvisational techniques, digital technologies, and material construction. They met as dancers in the Merce Cunningham Dance company and since 2010 they have created over 25 multidisciplinary dance works including site-responsive installations, concert dances, gallery performances and dances for film in venues such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Barbican Centre, REDCAT, The Walker Art Center, and MoMA/PS1. Throughout they have maintained a commitment to queer culture and aesthetics. Their partnership intentionally blurs authorship and maintains a deep commitment to collaboration with a diverse community of dancers, performers, artists and cultural institutions.

Choreographer Silas Reiner will visit W97 to offer an artist talk ahead of the upcoming Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener performances of Open Machine at ICA Boston. Topics will include the relationship between human and machine intelligence, the boundaries between public and private perceptions, and how the artists’ connections to dance and technologies have developed over the years.

There will also be a Q&A moderated by MIT Lecturer in Dance, Janessa Clark, followed by coffee and pastries in the lobby. All are welcome.

April 22 7pm W97-162

Maya LaLiberte / Countertechnique Workshop

Maya LaLiberté is a movement artist and educator currently based in Western Massachusetts. Through choreography, performance, and teaching she explores the visceral connections shared between humans during moments of intimacy, risk, presence, and play. Maya graduated from Smith College in 2018 with a BA in Dance, and became a certified teacher of Countertechnique in 2022. Throughout 2024 and 2025 she has been dancing for choreographer Faye Driscoll, touring internationally in her work Weathering. She also collaborated and performed in Driscoll’s newest site specific work, Oceanic Feeling, commissioned by Rockaway Beach Sessions for its 10th anniversary edition. Maya has also had the honor of collaborating and performing in works by Jennifer Nugent, Dafi Altabeb, Bill T Jones, Bebe Miller, Angie Hauser, Alex Davis, Andrea Olsen, and Thryn Saxon, among others. She has served as choreographic assistant to Lilach Orenstein and Dafi Altabeb. In April 2024, LaLiberté choreographed, directed and produced Spring Ephemerals, an evening length suite of new dances in collaboration with local dancers and musicians. Maya was a Guest Instructor at Wesleyan University in (Fall ‘23 and Fall ‘25) and teaches Countertechnique classes and workshops throughout the United States. 

Countertechnique® is a contemporary dance technique class and movement system designed to help the dancer think about the dancing body, focusing on the process of incorporating information into action.

The class starts with a recurring set of exercises, allowing dancers to investigate the Countertechnique® principles in detail. The second half of the class consists of changing components, working towards luscious movement combinations and jumping at the end.

The Countertechnique® class results in dancers using less energy, losing their fear of taking risks and gaining speed in changing direction. Dancers are encouraged to be pro-active in discovering connections and solutions, to be less concerned with judging themselves, and to work in a healthy way with regard to body and mind.

Countertechnique was developed by Anouk van Dijk throughout her twenty-five year career as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. Over the last twenty five years, the knowledge and experience she gained – in constant dialogue with her dancers – has gradually transformed into a detailed theoretical system and a teaching method, which now together form the Countertechnique system.

Maya’s workshop is open to all but space is limited to 25.

April 23rd- 7:30p- W97-110

Thomas Lehmen / Transformations and Transitions

Thomas Lehmen, born in Oberhausen, Germany, is a free lance choreographer, dancer, performer and teacher. 

From 1986 to 1990 he studied at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam.  There he was taught by Pauline de Groot, Steve Paxton, Ishmael Houston Jones, Mark Tompkins, Jaap Flier, Ze´v and others. 

From 1990 to 2010 he lived in Berlin, where he developed many soli, group works and projects: amongst others "distanzlos, "mono subjects, "Schreibstück", "Funktionen", "It’s better to...", "Lehmen lernt", which are performed worldwide. 

He gives workshops in divers formats in universities and studios internationally.

Next to guest professorships in Gießen, Hamburg, and Berlin, he held 2010 and 2011 a professorship at the Arizona State University, followed by i.a. the works "Schrottplatz" and "Bitte...". Between 2013 and 2017 he toured with the project "A Piece for You" with his motorcycle through three continents. Since 2017 he works again in Oberhausen and founded in 2019 the "Kunsthaus Mitte in Oberhausen" and the Tanz-Arbeit Oberhausen.

The publications "Schreibstück"("written piece/writing piece", book and score for 3 groups in canon form) and "Funktionen-Toolbox" (aiming towards emergent communicative choreographies) caused lasting international attention and numerous variations.

His returning interests are the development of artistic formats structures and communications, in which human beings reflect themself in the world and actively influence that with creative relations. 

The approaches often show elements of language through conceptional methods and expressions. The intellectual aspect and insisting consistency are often paired with accessibility and humour.

In the physical dance component he works i.a. with individual articulations, relations of dancers and danced dialogues. The work on dance technique is influenced by european, north american and asian principles.

He studied Classical Ballett, Contact Improvisation, Ausdruckstanz, Post Modern Styles, Kung Fu, Iaido, Sport and Handcrafts.

He is the creator of Schreibstuck, which is being presented in a new version by the MIT from April 29 to May 3.

Art, as a practice, has uncertain results. It is likely to be stabilized by reference points, frames, or verification through external systems. Additionally, one's own criteria, based on the development of a unique working process and one's own thinking, can sharpen and emerge from within an insecure zone of transformations and transitions.

This lecture examines possible orientations for communication with the known and the unknown, the foreseeable and the unforeseeable. 

The presentation will conclude with a conversation between Thomas Lehmen and MIT Director of Dance Dan Safer, and opportunities for conversation with attendees.