Choreography and Games

[increpare]

I am very very ignorant of choreography as an art, and yet it seems imminent to a lot of games, especially 'on rails' ones (space shooters are probably the ones that stand for me as the most obvious examples, both traditional wave-based ones, and bullet-hell ones).  Has there been much thought about this along more formal/literal lines?  I wonder what the possibilities might be for relationships between various schools of choreography and games.

[Ivan]

I always found it really interesting that Merce Cunningham used choreography software for many of his pieces (it seems every one that he did after 1991).

http://www.merce.org/about_danceforms.html

That is of course a very literal connection, but I think a very interesting one nonetheless.

[Michaël Samyn]

Since we live in Belgium and three of the world's most important contemporary choreographers are Belgian (Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus and Alain Platel), we've always wanted to do something with their work. And we recently have, albeit very modestly and just as part of the piece -not as foundation for its structure.

There's a big difference between classical ballet that sort ends in Maurice Béjart and the more contemporary style that started in the 80s with Pina Bausch et al. The former seems more suitable for games (especially when thinking of bullet hell shmups) because it is so much about formal beauty and geometric patterns. While the latter is often far more narrative and has a complex relationship with music and symmetry, and is often far less pure (mixed with performance and other art forms). No need to say I vastly prefer the latter.

[Alejandro]

Mmm. I also know virtually nothing on the subject, but it does seem relevant. It's often relevant to films (martial arts and most action genres, most evidently), so I can't see it not being important to video games.