{"id":33145,"date":"2026-09-04T16:57:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T14:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chroniques-biennale.org\/oeuvre\/this-is-unreal\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T14:35:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:35:40","slug":"this-is-unreal","status":"publish","type":"oeuvre","link":"https:\/\/chroniques-biennale.org\/en\/oeuvre\/this-is-unreal\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is Unreal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Pierre Godard ( FR<\/sup> ) & Liz Santoro ( US<\/sup>)
This Is Unreal<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Dance & AI<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Closing in Aix-en-Provence<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Friday, January 15, 2027
<\/strong>at 8:00 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pavillon Noir<\/strong>
Aix-en-Provence<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tickets<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Combined ticket for two shows: This Is Unreal<\/a><\/em> & by dIAboli<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Credits<\/summary>\n

An evening co-produced with the Ballet
Preljocaj<\/p>\n<\/details>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Ballet Preljocaj and the Biennale des Imaginaires Num\u00e9riques are teaming up for an evening where dance meets artificial intelligence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On stage, Liz Santoro tells the story of her life through dance. Her childhood in Boston, ballet, New York, Paris, motherhood, and the pieces she created with Pierre Godard. Except that here, it\u2019s impossible to tell what\u2019s real from what\u2019s not: some memories are real, while others are generated by artificial intelligence. Some movements come from her body; others come from an algorithm trained on her dancing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This Is Unreal<\/em> ” creates a hybrid world where the authentic and the synthetic blend together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cast<\/summary>\n

Pierre Godard and Liz Santoro<\/strong> : concept, direction, text and choreography
Liz Santoro<\/strong> performs
Pierre-Yves Mac\u00e9<\/strong> (as well as Chopin, Mozart, Tchaikovsky…) music
M\u00e9lanie Rattier<\/strong> space, light
Rezvan Farsijani<\/strong> costumes
Ana\u00efs Valli\u00e8res, Beatrice Pozzi,<\/strong> interns
L\u00e9o Ch\u00e9din<\/strong> Generative AI<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

One evening, two works, and the same sense of vertigo\u2014that of a world where humans and machines have become one. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Liz Santoro & Pierre Godard<\/h2>\n
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Since 2011, the Franco-American choreographers Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard<\/strong> have been collaborating closely to create generative and algorithmic choreographic works that seek to subvert our habitual patterns of attention. For Liz Santoro, a classical training at the Boston Ballet, a degree in neuroscience from Harvard, and a career as a performer on New York\u2019s experimental scene have fostered an inexhaustible curiosity about what the human body is capable of. For Pierre Godard, a deliberate path from science to directing and choreography\u2014via a dissertation on artificial intelligence\u2014fuels his reflections on the future of dance and its connection to society as a whole. <\/p>\n

The uniqueness of their respective artistic journeys has led them to develop original choreographic systems\u2014centered on movement and text\u2014that offer audiences playful and hypnotic experiences.<\/p>\n

Their work has been presented in France, Europe, North America, and Asia. They have created various group pieces, including *We Do Our Best* ( <\/i>2012), *Relative Collider* ( <\/i>2014), *For Claude Shannon* ( <\/i>2016), *Maps* ( <\/i>2017), *Noisy Channels* ( <\/i>2018 and 2019), *Stereo* ( <\/i>2019), *Scales* ( <\/i>2019), *Temp\u00e9raments*<\/i><\/a> (2019), Mutual Information<\/i><\/a> (2021), The Game of Life<\/i><\/a> (2022), as well as site-specific <\/i>works such as <\/i> Watch It ( <\/i>2012), Quarte ( <\/i>2014), FCS Redux ( <\/i>2017), Mass over Volume ( <\/i>2017), Learning ( <\/i>2018 and 2019), Contrepoints ( <\/i>2023). Watch It received <\/i>a Bessie Award in 2013 in the category \u201cOutstanding Production for a work at the forefront of contemporary <\/span>dance.\u201d In 2021, the work Contrepoints was selected as <\/i>a winner of the \u201cMondes nouveaux\u201d program initiated by the Ministry of Culture. <\/p>\n