Sydney Skybetter / Host
Sydney Skybetter is a choreographer. Hailed by the Financial Times as “One of the world’s foremost thinkers on the intersection of dance and emerging technologies,” Sydney’s choreography has been performed at such venues as The Kennedy Center and Jacob’s Pillow. He has lectured at SXSW, Yale, Mozilla and the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, and consulted for The National Ballet of Canada, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Hasbro, and The University of Southern California, among others. His work has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and a Creative Capital “Wild Futures” Award. He is a Senior Affiliate of metaLAB at Harvard University, a frequent contributor to WIRED and Dance Magazine, the Founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces and Host of the podcast, “Dances with Robots.” Sydney serves as the Deputy Dean of the College for Curriculum and Co-Curriculum, is an Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, and was the first choreographer at Brown University to receive tenure. He resides in Providence, Rhode Island with his partner, their feral children and a supposedly hypoallergenic cat.
Sydney is a white man with brown hair and glasses, wearing a white collared shirt and staring intensely into the camera.
Ariane Michaud / Executive Producer & Cohost
Ariane Michaud is a producer whose work focuses on building and strengthening communities that support the arts and advance social justice. Her passion for dance has led her to diverse roles within the industry, including serving as a producer for DANCE NOW NYC, a communications specialist for JUNTOS Collective, and the North American Tour Manager for Wang Ramirez. Over the past decade, Ariane has also operated as an independent consultant, providing invaluable support to individuals and nonprofit organizations in the realms of strategic planning, production, and project management. Ariane is thrilled about her recent appointment as a Production Specialist at Brown University, where she will further expand her contributions to the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI) and the Dances with Robots Podcast.
In a black and white photo, Ariane sits in front of a wood paneled background. Her brown curly hair is down, and matches her dark eyebrows, sharp jawline, and her serious demeanor. She wears a white button down, with a black turtleneck underneath, and a simple necklace.
Kate Gow / Archivist, Web Designer, & Cohost
Kate Gow is an archivist and designer of digital spaces. Her work revolves around memory, the body, and how we interact and perform with technology. She graduated as valedictorian from The Boston Conservatory, pioneering the Conservatory's first emphasis in Dance & Technology. In her sixth year with CRCI, she is moved to be documenting the conference that unveiled to her the power and significance of artistic intelligence. You can find her in performance and behind the scenes as a Senior Professional Services Consultant at Quadient.
Kate is a mixed-race Japanese woman with brown, straight hair wearing a tank and pushing a strand of hair behind her ear while looking into the camera.
Megan Hall / Podcasting Consultant
Megan Hall is an award-winning audio journalist. She has spent more than two decades collecting, analyzing, and telling stories. As Rhode Island Public Radio’s healthcare reporter, she created radio features, blog posts, and forums about complicated health topics. She then spent more than five years building, explaining, and improving HealthSource RI, Rhode Island’s health insurance exchange. Megan now uses her expertise to turn complicated ideas into everyday language for everyone from neurologists to ecologists. Current projects include: hosting the podcasts Possibly and Humans in Public Health, producing Globe Rhode Island's podcast Rhode Island Report, and creating podcast segments for Scientific American Custom Media. She is also the podcasting consultant for Dancing with Robots. Megan Hall has a bachelor’s degree in urban studies and a master’s degree in public health from Brown University. She lives in North Providence with her husband, two daughters, and a cranky cat.
Megan turns from her desk to face the camera wearing a patterened jacket and headphones around her neck. She has brown hair and is smiling softly, and she is holding a pen.
Laurel Lawson / Accessibility Consultant
Laurel Lawson is a choreographic collaborator, dancer, designer, and engineer with Kinetic Light. She is the primary costume and makeup designer, contributes other technical and production design, and designs the wheelchairs that she and Alice use in performance. She is also the product designer and lead for access and software initiatives such as Audimance, the company's app which revolutionizes audio description for non-visual audiences, and the primary curriculum author and teacher for Access ALLways, the hospitality & experience paradigm and collected practices for holistic disabled-led equity & accessibility. Lawson began her professional dance career with Atlanta’s Full Radius Dance in 2004. In her independent and transdisciplinary practice, homed at Rose Tree Productions, her work includes both traditional choreography and novel ways of extending and creating art through technology and design; in the creation of worlds and products experienced, installed, embodied, or virtual. Lawson’s choreography is marked by intensive partnering and grounded technique. Bringing the nuance of disabled artistry, she creates work for nondisabled, disabled, and physically integrated companies. She often weaves together abstract and concrete themes with overarching mythological inspiration, with attention to engaging, innovative, and immersive audience experience. Her work has been recognized with a 2019-20 Dance/USA Artist Fellowship, made possible with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Lawson is additionally the CTO and co-founder of CyCore Systems, a boutique engineering consultancy which specializes in solving novel, multi-realm problems of all sizes for a global clientele. A noted public speaker and teacher, she speaks on a range of technical topics as well as on leadership and executive practice, accessibility, culture and equity, and how to cultivate creativity and drive innovation. She also advises and consults for a wide range of commercial, academic, and nonprofit institutions including Dance/NYC and Dance/USA.
Laurel Lawson headshot. She is a white woman with cropped hair. Her chin is lifted and her gaze directed upwards with a slight smile; her blue eyes compliment her gauzy blue tank. Photo Robbie Sweeny
Kamala Sankaram / Music Commission
Praised as “one of the most exciting opera composers in the country"” (Washington Post), composer Kamala Sankaram moves freely between the worlds of experimental music and contemporary opera. Recent commissions include works for the Glimmerglass Festival, Washington National Opera, the PROTOTYPE Festival, and Creative Time, among others. Kamala is known for her operas fusing Indian classical music with the operatic form, including Thumbprint, A Rose, Monkey and Francine in the City of Tigers, and the forthcoming Jungle Book. Also known for her work pushing the boundaries of the operatic form, recent works include The Last Stand, a 10-hour opera created for the trees of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, Only You Will Recognize the Signal, a serial space opera performed live over the internet, Looking at You, a techno-noir featuring live datamining of the audience and a chorus of 25 singing tablet computers, all decisions will be made by consensus, a short absurdist opera performed live over Zoom, and The Parksville Murders, the world’s first virtual reality opera. As a performer, Kamala has been hailed as "an impassioned soprano with blazing high notes" (Wall Street Journal). A frequent collaborator with Anthony Braxton, she has premiered his operas Trillium E and Trillium J, as well as appearing on his 12-hour recording GTM (Syntax) 2017. Other notable collaborations include Meredith Monk’s Atlas with the LA Philharmonic, The Wooster Group’s LA DIDONE (Kaaitheater, Brussels, Edinburgh International Festival, Rotterdam Schouberg, Grand Théâtre de la Ville, Luxembourg, St. Anne’s Warehouse, NY, REDCAT, Los Angeles),and the PROTOTYPE Festival’s production of her composition THUMBPRINT (Baruch Performing Arts, NY, REDCAT, Los Angeles). Kamala is the leader of Bombay Rickey, an operatic Bollywood surf ensemble whose accolades include two awards for Best Eclectic Album from the Independent Music Awards, the 2018 Mid-Atlantic touring grant, and appearances on WFMU and NPR. Awards, grants and residencies: Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, HERE Artist Residency Program, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center. Dr. Sankaram holds a PhD from the New School and is currently a member of the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase.
Kamala is a woman with short hair, posing with her arms folded across an accordion. She has a short, styled haircut and delicate earrings, and is wearing a garment with flowing sleeves that drape over the instrument.
Rishika Kartik / Student Associate
Rishika Kartik is a "creative activist," disability advocate, and Student Associate at CRCI. Her work centers around using art, design, and technology to create a more accessible, ethical, and equitable world. As the founder of “Touch and Create Studios” and the “Vision of the Artist's Soul” project, Rishika champions museum accessibility and creates tactile art experiences for blind people nationally. She is a sighted member of the National Federation of the Blind and a board member of Mirror Image Arts, a nonprofit that disrupts the school-to-prison pipeline through participatory theater. She enjoys teaching, learning, and doing educational research at the Bedny Lab at Johns Hopkins and the American Foundation for the Blind. Rishika is a 2022 US Presidential Scholar, a Coca-Cola Scholar, a Live Más Scholar, a TEDx speaker, and the recipient of multiple arts grants. At Brown, Rishika is also a 2023 Royce Fellowship recipient, Studio Lead and accessible designer for Design for America, and the Chief Arts Coordinator for Brown Arts and Politics. Creating her own major in “Disability and Design,” she believes accessibility unlocks new ways of thinking, connecting, and experiencing the world
Headshot of Rishika Kartik, a young Indian woman with dark skin, brown eyes, sparkly eyeshadow, a large smile, and curly black hair. She is wearing white tassel earrings and a white blouse with ruffles. The background is a faded dark grey with faint white lines.
James Moses / Sound Editing, Mixing, and Design & Audio Consultant
Jim is an audio producer, composer, sound designer, engineer, and musician. He has worked extensively in electro-acoustic music, radio broadcasting, theatrical sound design, and live and studio music production. He currently is technical director and lecturer at the Brown University Music Department and MEME (multimedia and electronic music experiments) program.
Jim is a white man with glasses and a mustache. He is wearing a plaid shirt and is smiling in front of a gray background.
Andrew Zukoski / Assistant Editor
Andy is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, editor, and audio engineer from the DFW area. He is currently residing in Providence, Rhode Island, where he recently graduated from the Brown University music program with a focus on music production. At the moment, he is recording a five-song EP for his band Mind Body Problem, operating a home studio, and working on solo music.
Andy is a white man with long brown hair in his early twenties. He is smiling and wearing a short-sleeve patterned button-up shirt. He is in front of three animatronic elephants on an amusement park river ride.