iLuminate

I have never watched America’s Got Talent, but this group of dancers is must see tv. They are known as Team iLuminate, a dance act that involves some impressive choreography and incorporates innovative wearable light technology controlled by programmable software. It’s Daft Punk meets Cirque du Soleil meets Wild Style meets a rave held on Cybertron.

Introducing iLuminate™, the first patent-pending wearable, wireless lighting system.

Control lights on performers and moving set pieces from any DMX console, a MIDI device, or via a custom iPhone application for an interactive experience. You can also have us program your show and trigger it via Protools or with a click from our web interface.

Our small and light-weight devices include the EL8, which wirelessly controls 8 channels of el-wire (Electroluminescent Wire), and the LED12, for controlling 12 channels of LED Tape/Ribbon and, with RGB ribbon/tape, supports color-mixing.

The video above is directly cued to their performance in the quarterfinals of the show, they do a number to a dubstep remix of Katy Perry‘s track, E.T.  A very entertaining performance, quite beautiful and dramatic. Dare I say, incredible; it gives me goosebumps. Watch the YouTube video from the beginning to get the back-story of the creator of the iLuminate technology (Miral Kotb, a former dancer who has battled cancer) and the dance crew.

Miral Kotb created iLuminate when she united her background in dance and software engineering. She received a degree in Computer Science from Columbia University while studying dance at Barnard College. Upon graduation she worked as a senior software engineer at Bloomberg, LP, then entered the world of mobile application development. As a dancer/choreographer her work has been presented at different venues throughout New York City, London and Paris.

Miral didn’t see the overlap between her two worlds until she took a break from software development and started bringing her ingenuity to the dance studio. While exploring iPhone application development, the initial idea behind iLuminate emerged: wirelessly controlling lights on dancers bodies from the palm of your hand. She took her idea to the next level with the help of some of the best hardware and software engineers and consultants in the industry.

Below is their first performance on the first episode of this season.

More iLuminate on Vimeo.

Team iLuminate