Annotating the captured dance: reflections on the role of tool-creation

Abstract

ABSTRACT The WhoLoDancE project was a three-year EU-funded project that bridges dance with research in movement computing. One of the outcomes of this project was a web-based Movement Library that includes a large number of motion-captured sequences of contemporary dance, ballet, Greek folk and flamenco, and allows the users to annotate the content by selecting predefined tags or writing new ones. During the different stages of the project, such as defining specific movement sequences to capture, developing the conceptual framework for the analysis, and designing interfaces for learning, language applied to dance was a key aspect to drive research. In this paper, we reflect on how the annotation tool and the whole process provides an instrument to study the contexts and procedures for conceptualising dance. We envision that dance annotation based on language, creates new opportunities for ethnographic and practice-based participatory research.