Electric Tableau
Fiction - by Gordon Sun
“Contestant number sixteen, please step forward.”
I do so, entering a bright pool of light. Another spotlight shines on the three-person panel facing me. Behind them sit several hundred audience members, their faces swathed in shadow.
“Thank you for participating in today’s competition,” says the lead judge, seated in the middle. Her gray hair’s in a tight bun and she’s wearing a navy-blue turtleneck. “You made an impression on us.”
“There was a lot to unpack,” the black-haired man on her right says. “Your physicality was evident. You executed jumps with vigor and poses with strength.”
“Thank you.”
“Nonetheless, we have some questions,” the center judge says. “Your application indicates you’ve participated at several regional contests in recent months, though it seems like today’s the furthest you’ve progressed to date. Do you have a coach?”
“No. I’m a postgraduate fellow at Caltech, studying the optimization of human form and function through external augmentation. This was the impetus for my interest in ballet.”
“Caltech? Not known as a hotbed of the performing arts.” Laughter ripples through the crowd.
I press on. “My time’s limited due to my work. Ultimately, I didn’t see the need to commit to a studio or coach. I have immediate online access to thousands of taped routines, training courses, manuals—”
“Whoa, whoa,” the judge on the left interjects. Wavy brown hair springs from her head. The spotlight glints off a massive diamond ring on her finger. “There’s just so much wrong about what you’ve said I don’t know where to begin. Everyone needs a coach if they are to succeed in ballet. You can’t learn just by watching videos or reading books!”
“Or are you just not serious about ballet?” the center judge says, peering at me.
I’ve heard this before. “I’m completely serious. My scientific research is considered important in many quarters. I wouldn’t waste my time preparing and traveling to ballet competitions if I didn’t think it would benefit me or my work.”
“Please explain.”
“I’ve watched countless videos of the masters across the generations—Baryshnikov, Copeland, Tan, Kuznetsova, Zabelle, and so on. Physically, I can perform everything they can and more.”
The right-side judge shakes his head. “Comparing yourself to those legends is beyond arrogant.”
“You don’t understand,” I insist. “I’ve recently leveraged my work to upgrade myself and ensure I could hit the necessary peaks.”
“I’m sorry, what was that?” The center judge’s brow furrows. “You upgraded yourself? How?”
I hesitate. This isn’t the optimal decision path. “I’m a synth,” I say, allowing the sclerae of my eyes to glow blue.
Murmurs roll through the audience. “Seriously, a synth?” The left-side judge leans forward, scowling, palms on the table. “What are you even doing here?”
“Irrelevant question. I have the right to be here.”
“This isn’t for—”
“You never specified this was a human-only competition.” I paused again. “In fact, you didn’t know I was a synth until I revealed myself.”
“It certainly explains a lot,” the right-side judge says, frowning. “While powerful, her pirouettes reminded me more of a spinning top than anything remotely elegant.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” the woman on the left huffs. “A brute-force mechanical demonstration. No textures in her movement, like a single-speed bike.”
The crowd chuckles. A dark-haired woman wearing a purple scarf stands up and edges over to the aisle to leave, a large tablet in hand. Others follow her. The lights burn hotter than I expect.
“We did feel,” the primary judge says slowly, “that there was something...unusual about the routine. Since you have no coach, you must have choreographed it yourself, yes?”
“I did. I carefully reviewed hundreds of award-winning performances online to develop my choreography.”
“I understand now.” The judge nods. “I’ve seen bits and pieces of your performance in other people’s routines earlier this year—the Prix de Lausanne, the WBC. I’m guessing you took what you believed to be the highest-scoring components of whatever you saw and glued them together.”
“That’s minimally correct,” I say. “It would make sense that the best of the best put together would be a winning combination. I assembled each component in a way that—”
“Ballet is more than algorithmic optimization or whatever fancy catchphrase they’re calling it,” the left-side judge scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Your performance lacked cohesion. It was a cut-and-paste highlight reel from artists with far more talent.”
“Today’s performance was supposed to evoke the feeling of a first love,” the main judge said. “I didn’t get that here, and now I know why. It’s completely derivative, a pastiche.”
“I can’t totally fault number sixteen,” the man to her right chimed in. “Can synths even feel love?”
“My ability to ‘love’ is irrelevant—” I begin.
“Your technical score was an eight. Artistically, five point five. Choreography, four point five. This places you dead last among the remaining contestants,” the lead judge says with a brusque wave. “You’re dismissed. Thank you for your time.”
Backstage, I silently gather my belongings, find an empty room, and change into street clothes. I don’t feel “angry” in the sense that humans do with their neurobiological pathways and hormones, since I lack both, but androids have analogous processes. It requires effort to purposefully shut down the positive feedback loop centering on my latest failure.
I cinch up my sneakers, hoist my duffel bag over my shoulder, and head for the lobby. As I push open the door, I notice the woman with the purple scarf standing by the entrance. She’s middle-aged, dark-skinned, with shadows smearing her eyes and lines etched across her face. She holds the tablet tightly in her hands.
The woman turns toward me, locking gazes. I quickly review my memory banks for any evidence of past encounters, finding none. She hurries over, her overcoat trailing behind her, and stops directly in front of me. “Are you Jamie San?” Her voice is high-pitched, excited.
“Yes. And who are you?” I brace myself to run in case she turns out to be one of those anti-S people. I lack the bandwidth to deal with that right now.
“Narcissa Greene. I’m with a dance company.” She sticks out a wrinkled yet delicate hand, a translucent bandphone hanging from her wrist. I hesitate a moment. “Please, scan my contact info.” She flips her wrist up.
I silently activate an antiviral barrier before scanning her QR code. The woman continues, “Your performance intrigued me.”
“How so? The last choreographer I met said she doesn’t work with ‘fakes.’ Same with the last coach I approached.” Narcissa’s contact info flickers in my visual field. She isn’t just “with” a dance company: Narcissa is the artistic director for the Occidental Dance Company, a reputable regional group. I can’t recall classical ballet being anywhere in their repertoire. “Are you here to tell me the same?”
“No, of course not.” Narcissa looks shocked. “I started in old-school ballet too, many years ago, before moving into, ah, more contemporary disciplines.”
“I just got eliminated from the competition. What do you want from me?”
“Just a few minutes of your time. Let’s go to that café across the street. Do you drink coffee?”
“Yes.”
“Great. I’ll buy.”
We walk across the street and into a local coffee shop. The shop hums with activity and jazz permeates the air. Narcissa orders two lattes, and we sit in a small booth near the back. My first question to the woman as we settle in: “How do you know my name? Everything was anonymous.”
“I’ve read your work,” she says, setting her tablet on the coffee table. “And I’ve caught a couple of your presentations on the web.”
“Presentations? You mean my scientific work? From Caltech?”
“Of course! What else did you expect?”
“I see.” Why would a choreographer care about research on myomeric augmentation and nanotech-infused outerwear? “Interesting. My research typically appeals more to doctors and military types than artists.”
“Well, why are you interested in ballet? You’re a scientist, right?”
“Ballet is considered the foundation of dance.” I carefully sip the latte, feeling the liquid splash into the receptacle in my abdomen. “The dynamism of the human form is on full display. My colleagues say immersion’s an effective way of appreciating and applying the artistry of ballet to build better solutions for enhanced human mobility, balance, and flexibility. It’s also been a tactic to test out hypotheses about the physical limits of human motion.”
“But why ballet? And specifically, why classical ballet?”
“Being successful in a foundational discipline will facilitate success in others.”
“Two things. First, you can’t ever assume success translates across fields. I know this from personal experience.” Lips compressed, Narcissa leans back in her seat. “Second, I think you’re already extremely successful.”
“Making the final sixteen is hardly worth mentioning.”
“I’ll allow that it depends on your metric for success,” Narcissa replies. “But think about it. How many synths pursue anything in the arts?”
“Synth screenwriters and authors are common.”
“True, although digital scribing is a long-established field and if I’m not mistaken, most synth writers today work in technical fields or editing. How about the performing arts?”
I cycle through my memory archives. “I don’t know any of prominence.”
“Well, I don’t think that’s entirely true, but I guess definitions vary. There are lots of synths in breakdance and hip-hop crews. But some would say those have always been cutting-edge modes of expression and not the mainstream.” Narcissa drinks her latte.
I detect a note of bitterness but decide not to explore further. “I’m curious why you think I’m successful, given my track record.”
“It’s pretty obvious, I think. Androids and humans resemble each other only in the most skin-deep ways. You’re being judged by humans, using human standards of performance and artistic expression, and still made progress anyway.” Before I can respond, she continues, “Here’s the thing. Why are you looking for external validation from us?”
“Am I?”
“Raw ability is, in your words, irrelevant, if you can rebuild and reprogram your chassis. I saw your performances. They were incredibly kinetic.” Narcissa shrugs. “Your physical potential far exceeds ours. Honestly, that’s probably what the judges were really thinking.”
“Perhaps my research can bring parity to our worlds.”
“Maybe. The only other meaningful reasons to enter competitions are either to demonstrate your artistic sensibilities or get the attention of one of the premiere dance companies.” Narcissa sets her latte down, gesturing forcefully. “Classical ballet is five centuries old. Let me tell you, classical ballet competitions simply aren’t the place to experiment with aesthetics. People only want to see an appreciation of the tried-and-true. Why do you think Swan Lake is so popular despite being near two hundred years old?”
“That’s what I tried to do with my choreography, appreciate—”
“No, the judges got one thing right. You can’t rip off other people’s performances, workshop it together, and call it original.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“Your routine needs to be more than a copy-and-paste. It’s got to reflect your unique identity.” Narcissa leans forward. “You’re not just a clone of the masters. You are Jamie San. In essence, who is Jamie San?”
“All I have to do is figure out my identity? That sounds unreasonably simplistic.”
“No, no, it’s not just that. Your identity isn’t just some endpoint. It’s more of a process, an ongoing self-reflection...” Narcissa shakes her head. “I don’t think I’m explaining myself well. Maybe now’s a good time to introduce my partner.”
“Your partner?”
“That’s right.” Narcissa grins, switching on her tablet. “Nice, looks like we’ve got deep-fi here. Hey, Bea, you there?”
A blue smiley face appears on the tablet’s screen. Its cartoonish eyes glance around the room. “Hey, Narcissa! What’s up?” Its feminine voice is resonant and soothing.
“I’d like you to meet Jamie San, from the competition. She’s exactly who we’ve been looking for.”
“What do you mean, looking—” I begin.
“Jamie! I’m Bea Soda. Pleasure to meet a fellow synth in the real.” The smiley face grins toothily.
My processors strain to keep up with the revelations. “A synth? You’re a dancer, too?”
“Nope! I’m incorporeal! Well, technically I’m a cloud-based synth, so I’m everywhere, yet nowhere. Cool, huh?”
I can’t decide what line of questioning to prioritize. “You sound like a human,” I finally manage to say.
“Spending a lot of real-time with Narcissa and the company will do that. So, what do you think?”
“About what?”
“Let me guess. Narcissa still hasn’t gotten to the point.”
“Hey, I was almost there!” Narcissa laughs.
“We’re the dynamic duo of the Occidental Dance Company,” Bea says proudly. “Narcissa recruited me from an AI consulting firm a couple years ago to, as she called it, push modern dance in a new direction.”
I nod. “Go on.”
“A couple decades ago, people were already combining human ingenuity with machine learning in contemporary dance. Some intriguing pieces leveraged randomization and chaos in determining how performers moved. Others used unaugmented robots as dancers themselves, following programmed instructions on how to move or shadowing the actions of human collaborators.”
“I see.”
“The thing was, the stories being told were still anthropic. People recognized that the choreography and storylines remained very much human, even if there was synth input. We’re not only flipping that script—synth choreography with human input—but we also want to show the journey from a synth perspective.”
“That doesn’t sound very classical.”
“It’s called contemporary ballet, hello?” Bea’s laugh is like tinkling bells. “We definitely use concepts from the classical schools, but we draw from many other influences too.”
“Jamie appears to think classical ballet is the only entry point to success,” Narcissa explains, glancing at me.
“It seemed like the proper—” I begin.
“So old-fashioned for a synth,” Bea chuckles. “Hard to break the firmware sometimes, am I right?”
I have no answer.
“Listen, Narcissa probably talked about the importance of expressing yourself," Bea says.
"Yes," I reply. "Before you joined, she was critiquing my performance."
"There was too much—" Narcissa begins.
"I'd like to see for myself, please," Bea interrupts gently. "Narcissa, do you have a clip?"
"Sure, the whole thing's on the tablet," Narcissa replies. "I'll send it over."
Our table is silent for a while as Bea reviews the recording at normal speed, her avatar making a thoughtful face.
“My intent was to illustrate the power of past performances when I put together the routine. It wasn’t received well,” I say, as the clip ends.
“Too much human, not enough you,” Bea replies. “Ironic, really. The more you try to mimic humans, the more put off they get.”
"The uncanny valley effect."
“Exactly. You’ve got to break away from trying to act like a human and just be yourself. That’s the unwritten future. And we can define that together.” Bea’s tone grows serious. “Now we want to hear your story, Jamie. A scientist and a synth, struggling to be seen as a contributor to a very human art form. Such huge potential here.”
“But what can I do?”
“Seeing as how you’re a synth, I’m not worried about your physical capabilities. Whether you flow like a nanoswarm or lurch around like a zombie, we’ll work that in. It’s part of the process.”
“I have no hard accomplishments. No successful auditions—”
“Stop saying that!” Narcissa chides. “What’s the point of optimizing human form and function if all you want to do is replicate scenes from nineteenth-century ballets?”
Her logic seems sound.
“There will always be people who want to keep history alive. That’s fine. But your own work is clearly geared toward new discoveries, breaking barriers. So join us. Use your skills. And show the world what it is you feel.”
Maybe it’s time.