Henry David Thoreau once warned, “We do not ride on the railroad, the railroad rides upon us.” This Thursday, theater and dance major Elena Jessop’s senior thesis performance explores just how far the metaphoric train has come, probing the extent to which technology has proved both liberating and suffocating.

“Digital Disassociations” is Jessop’s senior thesis in choreography and costume design. As a double major in both theater and dance and computer science, Jessop has used the opportunity to merge the two disciplines that have been the focus of her college career. As such, the project is centered primarily on how movement and costume can be manipulated to evoke a story.

“Digital Disassociations” is divided into three shorter dance pieces, tied together by a unifying theme—“people trying to make connections with one another, to escape the lonely bubbles that they’ve been pulled into by computer technology,” explained Jessop. The first piece is about three women who vacillate between the comforts of technology and the inherent vulnerability and risk of human relationships. The second piece, titled “Love in Fractured Order” or “LIFO,” is a dance for two people, Lisa Smith ’09 and Kevin Birchby ’08, modeled after the behavior of stacks, data structures used for computer programming. “On the Boundary Line,” the final of the three, delves into the nature and significance of strictly virtual relationships, examining whether they have any meaning outside of cyberspace.

The stories and choreography are inspired by technology, but the digital world is also noticeably manifested through the electronically enhanced costumes which Jessop herself designed for the production. “I’m exploring the extent to which technology is starting to change our bodies and our interactions,” said Jessop. “Some of the enhanced costume pieces are an attempt to make these changes appear in physical forms. All the same, Jessop did not want the costumes to turn into “gratuitous additions,” striving throughout to ensure they fit seamlessly into the three pieces and served as important parts of each dance.

Initial work on “Digital Disassociations” began last summer for Jessop, who by that time was already working closely with her advisers, Professors of Theater and Dance Suzanne Dougan and Wendy Woodson. She used her fall semester to work with a smaller cast of performers and experiment with different ideas, ultimately deciding that splitting her project into three sections would allow her to more fully explore the ideas that really interested her. Many of the performers that Jessop selected had no theater background and were actually chosen based on their comfort with the movement and text or their unique style of movement.

Jessop credits her performers with much of the success of the finished product. Much of the work was “done collaboratively” with the performers; Jessop said rehearsals often involved her own choreography as well as developed choreography from the dancers’ movement or their text improvisations. “Elly would explain our motivations and reactions to our movements and would let us respond naturally,” said Birchby. “Mostly it’s just about letting your natural emotions into the performance.” Stage Manager Zoe Fenson observed that because of the split sections and separate rehearsal times, the three pieces would not be seen in “linear entirety” until the final rehearsals. “Each of the pieces has its own soul, its own particular story, and each of them has coalesced into a solid and fascinating piece of theater on its own,” said Fenson, who has been watching the section develop with each rehearsal.

“Digital Disassociations” runs about 45-50 minutes, making it the longest and most substantial piece Jessop has worked on for the theater and dance department. She has been working nonstop on the production, hoping that opening night will yield an interesting performance for audience members, regardless of their computer science background. “I wanted to see whether I could use the different ways of thinking about and structuring information and communication that I had learned for my work in computer science in the context of creating a performance piece,” said Jessop. Nevertheless, the production was designed to be accessible to those who know nothing of technology while remaining compelling to those who do. Jessop hopes that her interdisciplinary thesis project offers a “combination of technology and performance with experiences from both of [her] majors, with the potential to lead to some interesting and innovative material.”