LITTLE ANT & ROBOT
HUANG YI
LITTLE ANT & ROBOT:
A NOMAD CAFÉ
In 2012, Huang Yi and his robot dance partner KUKA performed together for the first time, and have gone on to tour to 16 countries and stage more than 75 performances in 32 cities.
2021 marks the opening of an immersive café onstage, hosted by Yi and KUKA. At the Nomad Café, art, technology, and everyday life are exquisitely interwoven with performers dancing with food and drinks — pouring music into cups and serving plates of treasured moments as guests and performers together fill the air with cherished childhood memories. With technology as a key ingredient, the alchemy inside the Nomad Café beckons us all in with a reminder to celebrate the children we once were and to collectively imagine a future filled with wonder and youthful energy.
Yi, KUKA, and the artists of Huang Yi Studio + welcome individuals, friends, and families to come enjoy quality time together in a space where art is accessible and a delight. Together we can immerse in a space where humans and robots collaborate to help one another and create the future. You are warmly invited to come experience the Nomad Café.
Little Ant & Robot: A Nomad Café premieres at Taipei’s National Theater in April 2021.
“I want to spark curiosity about science while encouraging exploration of beauty, aesthetics, and music. I want to urge us all, children and adults alike, to learn how to share — and how to love.”
ABOUT HUANG YI
Taiwanese dancer, choreographer, inventor, and videographer Huang Yi’s pioneering work is steeped in his fascination with the partnership between humans and robots. He interweaves continuous movement with mechanical and multimedia elements to create a form of dance which corresponds with the flow of data, effectively making the performer a dancing instrument. Named by Dance Magazine as one of the “25 to Watch,” Huang was immersed in the arts at a young age, spending much of his childhood in his parents’ studio watching them teach tango and learning to paint alongside his father. Huang has been Artist-in-Residence of the National Theater & Concert Hall, the National Performing Arts Center, Taiwan, and is widely considered one of Asia’s most prolific choreographers.
Huang’s groundbreaking and award-winning work, HUANG YI & KUKA, in which he and his dancers perform alongside an industrial robot he programmed, has opened the Ars Electronica Festival (Austria), TED Conference (Vancouver), and toured globally since 2015 including in Australia, the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the UAE.
Huang Yi premiered Under the Horizon, a hybrid opera, in collaboration with Berlin-based Ryoichi Kurokawa and the Netherlands Chamber Choir, in Holland and Taiwan in 2018. In February 2019 he premiered A Million Miles Away at Taiwan's celebrated National Theater. His latest work, Ink, premiered at the National Taichung Theater and the National Theater in Taipei in June 2023.
