WhoLoDance: Whole Body Interaction Learning for Dance Education: Blending Engine and Annotation Tool

Description

The Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, were partners in a large EU-funded H2020 project: WhoLoDance: Whole Body Interaction Learning for Dance Education which involved technology experts, dance scholars and dance professionals drawn from different research centres and dance companies across Europe. The main aim of the project was to build a motion capture repository of dance motions drawn from four different dance genres (contemporary dance, ballet, Flamenco and
Greek folk dance) built in a method allowing for similarity search among different compositions, and weapons experimented with building an immersive and responsive life-size volumetric display for the dancer to dance with, or ‘step inside’ another body. The aim was for the dancer to have the chance to experiment with different modalities of feedback (audio, visual, audio-visual, verbal, etc.) and also with different avatars, to ask whether this provides interesting opportunities to design adaptive and personalized path to learning and for dance making.

This presentation will demonstrate two proof-of-concept tools, the Annotation tool and the Segmentation tool, that have emerged from the WhoLoDance project and have been presented to different groups – students, artists and choreographers. The feedback received shows that these tools are useful for enriching the learning and creative process and offer an opportunity to deepen engagement with technique and performance requirements. We will share insights from the research process and
outcomes of the evaluation.

Period	21 Sept 2019
Held at	Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
Degree of Recognition	International