Dance Poem Revolution

Dance Poem Revolution is an interactive installation in which participants generate poetry through movement using a custom-built system inspired by Dance Dance Revolution. Players' steps activate language drawn from revolutionary texts, songs, and local histories, producing new writing in real time.

For each installation, I work with local collaborators to gather source material specific to the people and place. Materials generated through these encounters feed back into the system, adding new text and video sources so that each iteration builds upon the last. Across installations and performances, the project becomes a living archive shaped by movement, evolving in dialogue with local histories and participants. It explores how political thought and history can become embodied, poetic, joyful, and communal storytelling, where revolution is understood not as a fixed narrative or abstract ideal, but as a situated, collective process that is felt, practiced, and rewritten together.

Press

• CultureHub, "Choice, Chance, and Revolution: Melanie Hoff and Ime Soul's Dance Poem Revolution" by Michelle Santiago Cortés (2026)

Additional Credits

• Custom dance pad lighting and installation support from Sidney San Martín
• Initial support from the School for Poetic Computation