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THE IMPACT OF ADVANCED INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGIES ON MODERN DANCE AND DANCE THEATER AT THE END OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Abstract
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As we approached the end of the last millennium, advanced interactive technologies (already a major transformational force in our everyday lives) had begun to challenge the boundaries of both traditional dance theater and dance performances.

Accelerated developments in these technologies began to allow both professional and academic dance companies and departments to begin experimenting seriously with the application of advanced, high-end interactive technologies to drive/support/enhance performance art. These technologies, more than any other (e.g., technologies supporting modern lighting design), challenged the work and artistic outcomes of both performance and traditional dance artists and set the stage for new developments in the 21st Century.

The synergy of the integration of the three performance arts disciplines (i.e., dance, music, and theater) with interactive technology promised, at the end of the 20th Century, to transform the artistic landscape in terms of how performance art is created and experienced.

The goal of this article will be to begin to navigate - and map - the rapidly changing landscape that was evolving at the end of the 20th Century by identifying those key issues that challenged traditional dance performance, and it will further suggest new ways to meet these challenges in the 21st Century

Introduction
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Within the framework of modern dance and traditional theater (i.e., "traditional" in the sense of realist theater, usually the form most accessible to a wide range of today's audiences), the impact of advance interactive technologies at the end of the last century were two-fold:

1) They allowed theater artists not only the opportunity to re-visit but also to amplify post-realist genres. Specifically, these new technologies promised - and indeed did - break the "linear" element inherent in traditional plot and choreographed structure, and at the same time, they also promised to remove the traditional "4th wall."

2) They allowed for the possible creation of a new theatrical form: dynamic interaction with the "dramatic space." This interaction imbued the act of theatrical transformation with a new power to explore and search for a further reality of theatrical elements. Specifically, these new technologies promised to break the tradition model of production environments designed to transform theater space into a specific

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