Digital Humanities on Dance- DHM 280 F22

Within this project we relate dance as a whole to convey a relationship between the digital tools used for the project, and the significance of the movements that we hold near and dear to us as the humanities.

“Dance is what makes us human, lifting our spirits in times of grief. Dance will help us survive and thrive. And Dance Studies will respond, expanding the discourse of dance to record, document and theorize how we have lived and danced through this unprecedented time of isolation and shared experience.”
Sarah Whatley- Why Dance and Dance Studies Matter

Overview of Dance

Dance is a discipline that allows humans to express themselves and feelings through movement of their bodies. “Every social group has its music, and this music is somehow emblematic of a group’s identity.” The historical and cultural importance imbedded within dance traces back as far as 10,000 years ago, and is what makes us human down to our simplest form. “Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movements, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance is used in the digital humanities field to make animations using real life movements being displayed with the use of human motion tracking technology.

Digital Project in Relation to Dance

The augmented reality (AR) teaching tool called LabanLens™ engages innovative digital practices responding to diverse intelligences and abilities to immerse students in a digital-kinesthetic experience with dance analysis. The AR experience engenders studentsʼ articulate analysis of dances, which deepens their kinesthetic-empathetic engagement with each other and their world. With the use of this technology, dancers can connect the movements with the LabanLens to create LabanLens™ expands existing dance scoring methodsʼ capacities to advance knowledge for accessing and analyzing new and existing dances.” This technology is allowing people to dance and analyze what they are doing to learn from it. It also will allow for better scoring while used in competitive dancing. LabanLens™ introduces a modality to re-envision how we teach and employ Laban-based scoring tools, and an immersive environment for composing dances, analyzing them, and understanding historical embodiments. In addition to the HoloLens, KineScribe, is an iPad app that displays and edits scores in Laban movement notation. In it, users can read and create scores in structured Labanotation, Motif, and Language of Dance. This goes hand and hand with the HoloLens as they work together to create beautiful pieces of art through dance.

Tools & Methods

LabanLens™ is a dance scoring application developed for the Microsoft HoloLens that engages Laban-based movement notation and analysis. “Spearheaded by Hannah Kosstrin, assistant professor of dance, and Chris Summers, Arts and Sciences Technology Services, and Department of Dance media manager, LabanLens is paired with the Microsoft HoloLens AR headset, which projects three-dimensional images into the user’s perception of the real world.”

“The HoloLens is like a headband with a visor that comes down over the eyes while a powerful computer inside eliminates the need for wires and provides a mobile AR experience.”

“LabanLens users use a drag-and-drop method to pull Labanotation symbols(a system for analyzing and recording human movement),used by dancers to identify and score individual body movements, from a queue and place them onto a vertical score — much like how a musician notates musical symbols for a musical composition. Each symbol on the score signifies a different movement the dancer makes, and when it is ready, the dancer performs the corresponding symbol as it scrolls down the score.” The software allows a dancer to easily make notes on the score when practicing in order to correct bad habits and avoid repeating mistakes.”

A Page from the Labanotation score of “Possession,” choreographed and notated by Racheal Riggs Leyva in 2003.

Goals

LabanLens has the ability to map historical dance movements, as well as archive the new dance routines created using the digital technology. “LabanLens™ expands existing dance scoring methodsʼ capacities to advance knowledge for accessing and analyzing new and existing dances.” Both LabanLens and Digital humanities study the “historical embodiments” of dance and its cultural importance. The goals of the LabanLens project align with the digital humanities because it is using digital technology to create and study dance routines and movements with the goal of education in mind.

Values

LabanLens is an educational technology that utilizes the Microsoft HoloLens to map dance routines. The routines can then be played back while the dancer follows the patterns that are presented in the format of Augmented Reality (AR). They can better engage with the movements of the dance. “The AR experience engenders studentsʼ articulate analysis of dances, which deepens their kinesthetic-empathetic engagement with each other and their world.” This aligns with the educational values of Digital Humanities, which are focused on collecting and mapping data using digital tools for educational purposes.

Scholarship

Sally Gardner argues that an understanding of how modern dance has arose puts into question, “the nature of the symbolic relations and actual relationships between the dancer(s) and the choreographer.”

“Modern dance ought not to be thought of in these terms, however. In modern dance each artist’s choreographic oeuvre was almost always developed in the first instance in solo form; and ‘choreographer’ and ‘dancer’ were initially one and the same person as Roger Copeland points out:

“One of the most radical and decisive differences between nineteenth-century ballet and early modern dance is so obvious that its far-reaching implications are easily overlooked: the early moderns, almost all of whom began their choreographic careers by creating solos for themselves, were using their own unballetic bodies rather than someone else’s body as the raw material of their art.” (36)
Copeland, Roger. ‘Dance, Feminism, and the Critique of the Visual’, in Dance, Gender and
Culture, edited by H. Thomas. London: Macmillan, 1993.

Conclusion

In conclusion, through analysis we’ve learned how dance is related to the humanities with the digital Holo-lens project we selected. Technology and dance play a supporting role in relation to each other, as the way in which technology can shape, and transform artistic movements into something that was never before seen. Interdisciplinary collaboration is important when it comes to expanding, creating new ideas, and projects that align with the humanities. The more heads that come together result in richer production, and deeper analysis.

About The Chosen Ones

Kai Blattenberger- Kai worked on filling in information on the webpage, tools & methods, and scholarship of our discipline.

Jack Armagost- Jack was the coordinator, worked on the report, and finding the goals/values of our discipline.

Ethan Farkouh- Ethan was the slide show builder, found the discipline, digital projects relevant to that discipline, and overview of discipline.