History of Dance apart from Technology

Dance is one of the artforms that has the loosest constructions in history. In correlation, the attribution of digital elements and other forms of technology is easier to place in the construct of time and history. Both of these have intersected into what is now known as Digital Dance. With the combination of the two, a new platform has been made available to explore the confines of what defines dance and the role of technology in that art form. This paper will briefly delve into the history of dance, it will primarily look at the role of technology in its development, and it will examine the manifestation of that combination through the work of Canion Shijirbat: a Mongolian Digital Dancer who has expertise in both sides of the process.

With the evolution of dance, there has also been an integral mutual development of multiple levels of technology as well. The integral uses of technology in the development of dance have bridged to the new art form of Digital Dance.

Digital Dance, in short, encompasses any sort of dance that has a digital component interactive with the dance performance. “Dancers these days are enjoying an ever-enlarging toy box of intriguing digital playthings as designers develop sensors that can be embedded in pointe shoes, clipped to tunics, implanted in headgear, and tucked up tutus. These allow performers to interact with software, trigger lights and sound, create computer-screen calligraphies, and more.” Digital Dance is a movement where “Choreographers and software designers are flooding stages with digital projections, making them look like 3-D computer screens.

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Swirling, pulsing virtual environments surround performers in works like those from dance company Chunky Move in Australia, Japanese dancer Yoko Ando, and digital artists Adrien M/Claire B in France.”

Motion Capture Technology

In the development of Digital Dance, there are many of those components which are directly specified for this new art form. Motion capture technology has become an integral part of the art of animation and computer-generated imagery. While motion capture, the process of digitally recording movement, itself is a fairly new technology, it has roots in theories as far back as the 1400s, can claim relation to photography use from the 1800s, and has a rich history with animation covering the whole of the 20th century to present day (Chandler).

Photogrammetry

One of the concepts with the earliest roots, but also one that played a part in development of motion capture technology within the last fifty years, is photogrammetry. Photogrammetry is the use of photographs to calculate the distance between spaces, and while most commonly known for its use in cartography, the science can also be used to map the motion pathways of a moving object between photographs (“What is Photogrammetry”). The mathematical concepts of this work date back as far as Leonardo de Vinci and his theories on relative geometry; that is geometric calculations based on objects’ relations to each other. Photogrammetry concepts are still essential in the workings of motion capture technology of the present time; they are used for calculating distances between points on a motion captured figure and interpreting their relationships (Parent).

Chronophotography

Chronophotography, the photographic technique which exhibits a series of photographs of a moving object, has perhaps more recognizable artistic influences into the work of motion capture, especially when examined in conjunction with its influence on cinematography. This photography practice became popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The sequential photographs displayed together give the viewer a sense of movement, clearly a precursor to cinematography and animation (Peres). Most of the best-known chronophotographic works are those done by English photographer Eadweard Muybridge. In 1872, Muybridge’s friend asked him to help settle a bet on a popular question of the time: When a horse runs, is there ever a point at which all four of its feet are off the ground? Using a series of cameras and trigger wires to take multiple consecutive shots at high speed, Muybridge was able to prove that yes, when a horse runs it does at some point have all its feet off the ground, pictured in Figure 1.

While he got his start photographing landscapes and architectural elements, after his experience photographing the running horse, he focused on photographing moving subjects, in particular the moving human body (Muybridge). Although this work was a series of still images, the set together gave the sensation of movement as our mind traced the path from each image to the next. His landscape and architecture background still came in handy during these shoots, and they helped him chose interesting locations and backdrops for the motion studies. This work is where his greatest fame lies, as some of the earliest work that may be considered a direct predecessor to cinematography, especially years later when many have taken his work and turned it into animation (MacDonnell).

Rotoscope

In the early 1900s, cinematography had been born, animated cartoons have begun production, and artists wanted a better way to draw realistic movement. Max Fleischer of Fleischer Studios was one such artist, and in 1917 patented his invention, the rotoscope. As seen in Figure 2, the rotoscope was a multi-part system used by an artist for drawing cartoons with more realistic movement. First, someone or something is filmed doing the desired movement. Then, the film is fed through the rotoscope frame by frame, with the artist stopping to trace the figure in each individual frame. A painstaking process that was easy to mess up, it nevertheless became extremely popular as there was simply no better way to capture realistic movement.

Drawing of Rotoscope for Max Fleischer’s patent

Rotoscoping remains in use in animation to this day, although the process has been digitized and takes significantly less time. It has likely remained popular both because it does manage to capture realistic movement, but also because it is simply so inexpensive. Some users of rotoscoping have even managed to save a few extra bucks with it by rotoscoping their own cartoons to create quick, easy new animations that can be turned into full-length features with minimal effort. One of the easiest to spot examples of this comes from Disney’s Robin Hood, one of the lowest-budgeted Disney animations and reportedly a recycling of footage from various movies including Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book. This is most obvious when viewing two of the movies side-by-side; refer to Figure 3 to see stills from a dance scene in Robin Hood compared with those from a virtually identically choreographed dance scene in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Others have used this technique to make cheap works quickly, and it is quite possible that this is what kept rotoscoping alive to the current day. Comparison of shots taken from similar dance scenes in both Disney’s Robin Hood (1973) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves )1937) The mid-1900s showed the development of many technologies and theories that led to motion capture as we know it today. Further exploration of photogrammetry, tracker development, motion studies by bio-mechanical engineers, and work from various other researchers and developers eventually led to motion capture use in video games in the 1990s, and the first use of motion capture to create realistic digital humans in 2001 in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Griffiths). Over its lifetime, a variety of methods and technologies have been developed for motion capture

Works Cited

1. Woodard, Stephanie. “Leaping into the Digital Future: Digital Dance – Dance Informa.”
2. Dance Informa Magazine, 11 May 2015, www.danceinforma.com/2015/05/05/the-digital-dance-future/.