Week 2 Little Details and the Big Apple - Jan. 29, 2023

This week was an exciting and fruitful one for us. The Paul Taylor Dance Company invited us to NYC to meet in person and watch the dance rehearsals. We drove to NYC on Thursday and spent the whole day with the client on Friday. We started the morning with discussing the progress we’ve made so far. Early in the week, we tested different tools to see what kind of data is extractable from the videos of Aureole, including OpenCV+DNN, OpenPose, MediaPipe and MMCV. Unfortunately, because of the low resolution and how far the camera is from the dancers on stage, the ML tools can only identify the movements sometimes. The earlier the video is, the less accurate the output data is. Since the goal of the Analysis Dashboard is to provide analysis for videos as early as 1962, we concluded that with the current tools and timeframe, Analysis Dashboard might not be the direction to go for.

MediaPipe Aureole 2002
OpenPose Aureole 2002
MMCV Aureole 2002
OpenPose Aureole 2022

OpenPose Aureole 2002

The good news is, the second idea, Interactive Application, using animated avatars to bring history to the present, received positive feedback. The goal is to bring the dance legacy forward and maintain the history and core of the work while moving towards the future. During our discussion with the dancers, the little details for the application also came to life. We can potentially include this application in pre-show emails that could prepare the audience for the show. The application could focus on the artistic expression and feeling in the dance, using visual effects to illustrate the invisible energy the dancers feel. The major issue discussed was dance illiteracy and the hope for the project is to make dance more accessible and interactive for the general audience through a website/web application. Potential inspirations are Ring Fit, Just Dance and Peloton. Rough schedule for the project is to start with Paul Taylor’s iconic Back Exercise, with a stretch goal of allowing custom dance levels in the future. Both the client and us are excited to push the project in this direction and provide an interactive experience for Paul Taylor’s audience.

With a direction in mind, we enjoyed the rest of the day by observing the dance rehearsals and having a great team dinner after.