Dancing in Quarantine: Performance Training across the Digital Divide

Abstract

Dancing in Quarantine: Performance Training across the Digital Divide Sebastian X Samur (bio) In March 2020, reacting to increasing COVID-19 lockdown measures imposed by the New York state government, I found myself turning to an unexpected resource for activity: dance video games. With gyms, pools, children’s parks, and indoor play facilities closed, I needed to find new sources to keep my daughter active, which was especially challenging on cold, rainy days. Dancing at home provided one solution, which surprisingly yielded several discoveries pertaining to my own work in performance training. The game has served to underline essential qualities of in-person performance training, which live-streamed training substitutions have only been able to emulate with limited success. These insights have arisen in large part because both video games and in-person studio training are tailored to their respective performance spaces (home and studio), while live-streamed adaptations are a makeshift hybrid combining the two. In this short essay, I will present an initial analysis of four disruptions arising from live-stream training that have been highlighted through video-game training. These include breaks in: shared space, physical contact, rhythmic flow of experience, and establishment of stage presence. Under lockdown conditions, the video game my daughter and I enjoyed together is Just Dance, a game that is released with annual editions, featuring choreographies for one to four people set to a mix of popular international dance songs. The game follows a similar gameplay format as titles such as Dance, Dance, Revolution; Guitar Hero; and Wii Fit. These games take advantage of increasingly improved controller and motion-capture technology to allow players to move their body in response to onscreen cues. In Just Dance, players select a song they wish to dance to––alone or in a group––and then copy the movements of an onscreen avatar dancing in time to the music (fig. 1). The series is aimed at a younger, amateur audience, yet can feature sophisticated, high-level choreographies performed by professional dancers. This mix of an advanced level for a beginner audience demands that the game designers find a means to quickly and simply make the game accessible to players who are not necessarily experienced gamers nor trained dancers. The solution that has proven successful is in presenting silhouetted dancers for players to mirror, coupled with a series of simplified two-dimensional body illustrations (called pictos) showing each movement and a (generous) star scoring system that gradually awards points up to five stars when player movements match up with the video choreographies. Combined with the motion capture technology, Just Dance provides a digital means for quickly transmitting choreographies in a way that “analog” systems–– such as text-based descriptions, early twentieth-century mail-in dance lessons, or labanotation, for example––cannot (fig. 2).The result has been the creation of a community of millions of amateur dancers dancing at home, breaking a sweat, and improving, to varying degrees, their movement vocabularies as they try to obtain higher scores. Indeed, some players can reach a remarkably high degree of competence, as evinced in live world-cup events the developers have organized, demonstrating that the game can lead to genuine performance improvement through a scoring system that encourages repetitive practice. Of course, this form of learning is no substitute for in-person teaching and rehearsal. In addition to lamenting the absence of performances during quarantine, lockdown alternatives such as Just Dance bring an appreciation for the performer’s behind-the-scenes work training and rehearsing in [End Page E-23] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. A screenshot from Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now in Just Dance 2017. Players copy the movements of the central avatar and can use the lower-right pictos to anticipate upcoming movements. A star-based score appears in the lower left. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Even a hundred years ago, alternatives to in-person teaching were attempted, as evinced by this example of steps from an early twentieth-century mail-order dance lesson offered by the Arthur Murray Dance Studio. (Source: https://www.amdancing.com/exactly-arthur-murray-know-name/.) [End Page E-24...