BREATHLESS:
CATIE AND THE ROBOT

An eight-hour modern dance homage to physical work

Created by Catie Cuan and Ken Goldberg

Commissioned by Jacob's Pillow and NationalSawdust+, and sponsored by UC Berkeley's AUTOLab.

The Breathless premiere at NationalSawdust+ was made possible by the generous support of Kathryn and Emmanuel Morlet and the Westcustogo Foundation, which supports the series.

Breathless: Catie and the Robot is a captivating durational duet created by dancer/choreographer/engineer Catie Cuan and artist/researcher Ken Goldberg that pairs Cuan with an industrial robot arm for an eight-hour dance performance that unfolds over the timespan of a single American workday.

Performed to a soundtrack including original compositions by Peter Van Straten, Breathless will contrast the beauty, strength, and frailty of the human body with the relentless precision of machinery. In the debut of their ambitious new piece, Cuan and Goldberg address the historical, cultural, and emotional complexity of our collective fears about artificial intelligence and the future of human labor with the significant technical gaps that remain between science fiction and contemporary robotics.