FUSION: a piece of AI with Human Robots

Train your mind and body with AI, and you will reach the supernatural.

I heard that it is all about commercial advertising, to promote the "FUSION" ballet production in the AI-based category.

But this might only be the shadow as in Plato's cave, I said to myself.

I certainly embrace the idea in which the future belongs to those who interpret integrated knowledge through AI. Therefore, I prefered to travel far, and make my own assessment.

Because "FUSION" does the opposite, turning humans into robots. While the world is being filled with Chat GPT, the robot orchestra conductor, the AI based priests, or even some who are asked to destroy human civilization. So...

Let's go!

Firstly, the production is signed by a ballet genius, the theme is philosophical and centered around the basic elements of life: air, water, (inner) fire and earth, so the message can be difficult to digest. Same the AI, one might say.

Secondly, the Opera house in Leipzig literally has an iron curtain, and Leipzig is a city from the Eastern bloc, holding an architectural mix that preserves the memory of communism.

Imagine then the breathing of Harry Yeff when the iron curtain has not yet risen, and the dancers released from behind the iron wall hanging among the lights and shadows, waking up from a deep sleep. The one where they didn't have access to the integrated knowledge revealed through AI tools? Some might wonder so.

And imagine the piano and later the violin under Gadi Sassoon's fingers, perfectly completing the atmosphere. And again: the ballerins.

Mario Schroeder - the superhuman

From the first struggle to the last murmur, this show is an all-in-one, and Mario Schroeder is the superhuman of it.

Because the scenographer's bet with the play was not to bring robots on the stage, but to impersonate robots. Therefore, he created hundreds of thousands of unique movements for each of the 32 dancers, in a perfect sync.

At the small guesthouse where we stayed in Leipzig, our host, a middle-aged gentleman, explains to us, visibly touched and respectful: "My husband sings in the Opera choir. The ballet performance you are seeing is choreographed by Mario Schroeder, the former ballet dancer and now the brain behind all the special productions."

And indeed, it seemed to me that I had Plato's philosophy on stage as a starting point, representative scenes from science fiction films, biblical ideas like the Tower of Babel, Eugene Ionesco's theater of the absurd, Nietzsche's superhuman overcoming all the sufferings and accepting the unhappiness, vocal, piano and violin music coming from another dimension.

Harry Yeff, Gadi Sassoon and the ballerins - Mario's guests

Not being phisically present on the stage, but imposing AI and himself as the main actors fingering this show, the choreographer Mario Schroeder had three main guests.

Harry Yeff: A human being in flesh and blood, a London-born neuro-divergent artist and technologist. He reproduced in "FUSION" everything he learned by training his voice with AI tools. He possesses machine-like vocal control, so we can say that he is the AI itself.

Gadi Sassoon: he has Italian and Syrian origins, and his music combines tradition with the precision of computerized mathematics. And the later is AI, isn't it? Gadi is not an instrumentalist, but an actor who casts the latest technological spell on you.

The Dancers: Mario Schroeder analyzed the movements of the AI robots so much that he recreated them precisely through his dancers, who you can swear from the beginning to the end that they are not people, but machines suggesting one single block movement.

No AI present in "FUSION"? Having the above described, I let you decide what else will one bring to the stage.

Instead of a closing word

It's been a pitty that in the foyer, the introductory word was in German. And of course Google translate voice, the free version, did not work at the moment. Among the few words understood: art, technology, artificial intelligence, Plato, myth of the cave, ballet, Mario Schroeder, Harry Yeff - Reeps100.

But afterall from everything, even from the dance, anyone understands as much as they can, in relation to previous experiences.

For me,

The message in this ballet piece is about understanding and integrating artificial intelligence into the normality of our lives. Along with mistakes, failure, dependence on something that most of us only understand as "shadow".

And along with the genius of the human being and choreographer Mario Schroeder. Which at the end of the production bowed down to the human "instrumentary" that made the AI translation possible.