Can a Robot Become a Dancer? Perspectives on Dance, Art, Technology, and Electromechanical Autonomous Machines

Abstract

This essay examines whether humanoid robots are truly capable of dancing, as claimed by high-tech robotics companies, or whether what is presented is merely the mechanical execution of steps and codified stereotyped movements lacking the historical, cultural, and expressive dimensions that characterize artistic practice. Drawing on a historical-critical perspective, the essay discusses how the reduction of movement to technical performance tends to reinforce a highly limited model closely associated with physical and sports training. These reflections incorporate contributions from authors such as Isadora Duncan, Marcel Mauss, E. H. Gombrich, and the contemporary French dancer and essayist Dominique Dupuy in order to argue that dance is fundamentally rooted in lived experience, imagination, embodiment, and traditions transmitted through the human body and the vivid presence of the master. Ultimately, the essay questions the limits of artificial intelligence and robotics in the creation of artworks in general, and in dance performance and choreography in particular, while emphasizing the irreducibly human dimensions of dance as a poetic language.