With ‘Mere Mortals,’ San Francisco Ballet Illuminates Complex AI Questions

In Greek mythology, Pandora opens a jar and releases untold evils and miseries into the world. In the new ballet Mere Mortals, a retelling of the millenia-old myth of Pandora’s box complete with electronic music and visuals generated with help from AI, it’s artificial intelligence that escapes from the container, never to be stuffed back in.

Mere Mortals opens San Francisco Ballet’s 2024 season on Friday about 50 miles from Silicon Valley, a global hub of technology, including artificial intelligence. S.F. is itself home to a number of big-name AI players, among them OpenAI, maker of the ChatGPT online chatbot and the DALL-E image generator, and General Motors’ Cruise, the beleaguered producer of self-driving cars.

“Artificial intelligence continues to grow and evolve, and Mere Mortals will tackle the complicated issues and feelings as well as the exciting creative promise that this new technology holds,” San Francisco Ballet artistic director Tamara Rojo said in a statement.

Indeed, the ballet, performed by a cast of more than 40 dancers, premieres as AI continues to evoke varied, and strong, reactions: from excitement about its potential to fear it will change the face of creativity or steal jobs. In the most extreme apocalyptic scenarios, it does even worse.

Mere Mortals audiences, however, shouldn’t expect to come away with decisive edicts about the benefits or risks of the proliferating technology. Some characters in the production welcome new ideas and innovations with curiosity and fearlessness, others have a destructive edge.

‘Embracing Ambiguity’

“We’re floating in this place of the unknown, and that is what’s scary,” Canadian-born choreographer Aszure Barton said during a break from rehearsals a few days before opening night. “People like to understand and to have concrete answers. Being able to practice embracing ambiguity, and living in that space, is hopefully the experience of coming to this performance.”

Barton has worked with performers and companies worldwide, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, American Ballet Theatre, English National Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater. When one of her former collaborators, San Francisco Ballet’s Rojo, approached the choreographer with an idea to remake the Pandora parable for the technological age, “I needed to take a moment to process it because in the past I didn’t like the representation of Pandora,” Barton said. After all, in the original parable, Pandora, the first mortal woman created by the gods, unleashes humanity’s ills.

Then Barton, the first woman to receive a full-length commission from San Francisco Ballet, shifted her perspective, becoming excited about the possibility of reinterpreting the ancient myth. In San Francisco Ballet’s retelling, which runs through February 1, Pandora represents a new human species with advanced skills that embody progress and learning. Barton has cast both male and female dancers in the role.

Through movements that vary from precise and urgent to tender and clutching, dancers turn themselves both into complex machinery and deeply feeling humans. “It’s very physical, quite sensual,” Barton said of the production.

British DJ and music producer Sam Shepherd, also known as Floating Points, composed the score, his first for a ballet. It’s a combination of live orchestral music and electronic instruments that he’ll perform on a synthesizer alongside San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. Barcelona-based mixed-media artists Pablo Barquín and Anna Diaz produced the immersive visuals, which include light and video imagery inspired by mythic parallels with the creation of the atomic bomb. They have presented their work at arts festivals including Coachella and Ars Electronica.

“The whole experience is delightful for the senses because there’s a lot of stimulation,” Barton said. “We’ve created something that is unexpected.”