An analysis of motion features of different characters in Nihon-buyo dance using motion capture

Abstract

This research was intended to investigate the relationship between body motion and Kansei, or emotional features, conveyed by motion. A work of Japanese traditional dance (Nihon- buyo) in which a performer plays several different roles or characters has been used for a subject of investigation. Through the psychological rating experiment observing a CG character animation in an abstract representation, we found that the observer recognized the impressional factors of the body motions of each individual character or role based on the four aspects: ‘activity’, ‘potency’, ‘gender’ and ‘complexity’. By the analysis of PCA on 22 physical features extracted from body motion data, we found that the variation of the motions could be expressed by four indices; velocity, height of waist, openness of the body and the range of the height of waist. By using a multiple regression analysis, we discovered the relationship between the impressional features given by the motion and the physical motion features.