THIS is a world where everything is made up of dots and lines

The most complex images and artistic works can be stripped back to blots and straight lines rearranged in a particular order.

“We wanted to strip it back to the building blocks and then start building again,” says award winning choreographer Tom Dale, one of the minds behind dance production Digitopia.

“In this particular piece it is all about dots and lines and we take these very simple elements and look at their growing relationship together.”

In this marriage of the physical and digital the two dancers, Dotty and Hex, interact with blossoming visual light show which becomes the third performer in their act.

The character of Hex is a simple two-dimensional line, but one day decides he wants to make a curve in this new production by the Tom Dale Company.

Eventually he learns how to bend, shape and dance and pops into the third dimension in this marriage of urban dance, electronic music and digital art.

As he goes on his adventure with his new friend Dotty they uncover a developing universe which goes from simple grids to a constantly shifting environment and tessellating landscape reacting to the dancers and the music.

Hex discovers he can transform into anything he wants to, defying the the rules of his own reality.

“A lot of this came from looking at the most basic elements of animation,” says Dale.

“Dots and lines, ones and zeroes, and I thought in the world you can make things happen which you cannot in the physical world. You can mess about with gravity, create optical illusions, manipulate two dimensional objects, so you have this interplay between the visual and physical worlds.

“This is what I am interested in, the building and the evolution of a world.”

Dale began experimenting with the marriage digital art and dance in 2004 while working on a project in India. 

“When I first started I was using digital projection as a light source rather than using digital animation as a figure image,” says Dale. “We were researching ideas to do with dance and technology and we thought rather just using it as a projection you could use it as a another performer.”

But introducing a third digital performer does add challenges for their dancers themselves who have to work out how best to work with their new virtual partner.

“It is difficult when you start with nothing other than concepts and you have to sit back to create piece which is so dependent on timing and work out how they are all going interact,” says Dale. “But in the end there is a certain finesse which makes the final product really good, but it is not easy.”

He adds often the design process can be “tedious” but says the whole process is worthwhile.

He goes on: “It is kind of nice for the dancers in a way to have this new digital element, it opens up new ways of interacting with each other as they discover which rules they can break in terms of their own movement. We can turn the land into ice and invent the choreography around that.”

But following on from the show the company along with MOKO Dance, an organisation dedicated to bringing dance to children, are hosting a creative dance workshop for youngsters to explore the digital soundscape.

“We just known from previous experience that after children see this immersive world in front of them they want to be part of it and dive in,” Dale says.

“They want to move and be part of it so we wanted to do some kind of stay and play session so they can interact with the technology and meet the dances they are in awe of. We just want to make it a really nice experience."

DIGITOPIA- The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Brighton, Thursday, April 7
Doors 1.30pm. Tickets £10, call 01273 201801.