Sydney Skybetter's research operates at the intersection of choreographic theory and emerging technology, with particular focus on choreorobotics, the politics of human-robot interaction, and the choreographic dimensions of microgravity performance. Through projects including the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces and Space Camp, he develops body-based methodologies and training curricula for performance in extraterrestrial environments.
Skybetter's scholarship examines how choreographic frameworks can reorient the design, ethics, and cultural politics of emerging technologies, arguing that dance practice offers epistemic tools unavailable to engineering and computer science alone. His Choreodaemonic Platform, developed in collaboration with disabled artist Laurel Lawson and supported by the Ford Foundation and Creative Capital, interrogates how artificial intelligences might be trained to move in ways that resist normative and ableist body standards. His peer-reviewed and public scholarship spans human-robot interaction, screendance, and the sociology of algorithmic systems, with work appearing in TDR: The Drama Review, WIRED, and the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, among others. The forthcoming co-edited volume Robot Theater: Collisions in Performance and Social Robotics (Routledge, 2026) consolidates a decade of interdisciplinary inquiry into the dramaturgical and ethical stakes of social robotics. Across this work, Skybetter builds coalitions between choreographers, aerospace researchers, roboticists, and disability scholars to establish performance practice as a legitimate and necessary site of technological research.
Skybetter's research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and a Creative Capital "Wild Futures" Award, with major grants directed toward The Choreodaemonic Platform (developed in collaboration with Laurel Lawson) and the Dances with Robots podcast. He held a 2023 Visiting Fellowship at the Boston Dynamics AI Institute to research next-generation choreographic interfaces. At Brown, the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces has received continuing support from the Creative Arts Council, the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and the Faculty Lectureship Fund; additional internal awards include the IVY+ Faculty Advancement Network Provost's Fellowship (2025), the Salomon Award (2024), and a Brown 2026 Committee Award in support of The Ruckus Sessions (2025).
