AUSTRINGER
June 5 - 7, 2025
In collaboration with artists-in-residence Louisa Pancoast and Dr. Nialah Wilson-Small, Smashworks Dance presents Austringer, an immersive contemporary dance piece with a network of drones and dancers exploring human-drone physical contact, weight-sharing, and proximity and how it relates to surveillance and intimacy.
Does witnessing closeness and touch between humans and drones alter our perception of drones; are they a threat or a comfort? A linguistic cousin to the better-known falconer, the term austringer encompasses the complex dynamic amongst a team of predators: one airborn and the other earthbound. Austringer asks how a drone body affects the movement of a human body; do drones have the capacity for meaningful, nonverbal communication with humans; and does this communication support an egalitarian partnership between drones and humans?
Artists-in-residence Louisa Pancoast and Dr. Nialah Wilson-Small will continue the research they presented at the 2023 ACM/IEEE Human Robot Interaction Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, pushing progress in the worlds of tech and performance art along the way.
About The Artists
Louisa Pancoast is a dancer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges performance, visual art, and robotics. She has performed for acclaimed choreographers and directors including Yvonne Rainer, Claus Guth, Celia Rowlson-Hall, and Mona Fastvold, with notable appearances at The Metropolitan Opera's Salome, the Park Avenue Armory's Doppelgänger, and the Museum of Modern Art's Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done. She has also appeared in projects commissioned by Miu Miu and collaborated with musicians Jesse Malin, Billie Joe Armstrong, and Lando Chill.
Her recent choreographic practice focuses on choreorobotics, including Austringer, co-created with Dr. Nialah Wilson-Small and presented at the 2025 International Conference on Robotics and Automation and The Boiler. Louisa has also co-authored research on human-robot collaboration and has created interdisciplinary performances for exhibitions at The Boiler, Garvey|Simon, and Main Window DUMBO. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Robotics, Automation, and Dance Lab in Philadelphia and holds a B.A. in English Literature and Art History from New York University.
Dr. Nialah Wilson-Small is a robotics researcher, educator, and consultant. My work centers coordination algorithms for multi-robot systems and human-drone interactions. Specifically, I study how drones can use tactile feedback to influence human motion. My work is at the cross section of design, human-robot interaction, and autonomy. I earned my PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University where I became the first Black woman in the university's history to do so. I also earned a MS in Aerospace Engineering from Cornell and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Howard University.