Relevé: An at-home ballet self-learning interactive system

<p>Benefits from the recent technology advancement, such as physical computing and social media, it has become a global industry trend to provide intelligent exercise and self-learning support in an ‘at-home’ environment. However, it is still a design challenge to ensure the safety of users while enhancing their experiences when developing specific ‘at-home’ self-training programs which require high-level techniques, such as ballet dancing. This paper introduces Relevé - an interactive self-learning system for ballet with emphasis on various safety issues. Based on the professional knowledge of ballet dancing posture and kinematic movement research, Relevé intends to answer the needs of ballet dancing home-based self-teaching activities through online courses. The design has been based mainly on the methodologies of tangible interaction design. </p>

Labanotation and the Study of Human Movement in Anthropology

This paper discusses the ways in which Labanotation contributes to the analysis of human movement in anthropology. It is based on the experience of the authors, who, as graduate students in anthropology, were involved in research projects where they used Labanotation for the collection and analysis of data. We argue that the ability of Labanotation to accurately represent body movements and gestures, as well as the spatial relationships between moving agents, makes it useful for analyzing different dimensions of social life as enacted by moving bodies. It also records action from the moving person's point of view, which conforms to the ethnographic practice of taking into account local meanings attached to particular kinds of social action. As such, it can be used at different stages of ethnographic research and for different analytical purposes. To illustrate, we present topically diverse ethnographic projects where Labanotation was used: (1) documentation of the New Year ritual of the Lahu Na Shehleh from Northern Thailand for the purpose of preserving the dance and teaching it to younger members of the community, (2) understanding local meanings of ballet dancing in the Philippines, and (3) identifying tacit learning of social norms among children in Ayacucho, Peru.

Cinematic “Pas de Deux”: The Dialogue between Maya Deren's Experimental Filmmaking and Talley Beatty's Black Ballet Dancer in A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945)

A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) is a collaborative enterprise between avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren and African American ballet dancer Talley Beatty. Study is significant in experimental film history – it was one of three films by Deren that shaped the emergence of the postwar avant-garde cinema movement in the US. The film represents a pioneering cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue between Beatty's ballet dancing and Deren's experimental cinematic technique. The film explores complex emotional experiences through a cinematic re-creation of Deren's understanding of ritual (which she borrowed from Katherine Dunham's Haitian experiences after spending many years documenting vodou) while allowing a leading black male dancer to display his artistry on-screen. I show that cultures and artistic forms widely dismissed as incompatible are rendered equivocal. Study adopts a stylized and rhythmic technique borrowed from dance in its attempt to establish cinema as “art,” and I foreground Beatty's contribution to the film, arguing that his technically complex movements situate him as joint author of its artistic vision. The essay also explores tensions between the artistic intentions of Deren, who sought to deprivilege the individual performer in favour of the filmic “ritual,” and Beatty, who sought to display his individual skills as a technically accomplished dancer.

In Defence of Ballet: Women, Agency and the Philosophy of Pleasure

This article offers a novel approach to conceptualising ballet practice as a leisurely activity that exudes pleasure. It argues that the notion of pleasure in ballet has been neglected in scholarly research which criticises ballet for its negative impact on the physical and mental health of dancers, its authoritarian teaching methods and its trivial aesthetic that objectifies the female body and perpetuates the construction of stereotypical gender roles within a patriarchal society. This study focuses on the lived experiences of female amateur ballet participants, emphasising their agency. It provides first-hand accounts to illuminate the significance of ballet in women dancers’ personal growth, development and psychological wellbeing, drawing on sociologist Roger Caillois's categorisation of pleasures involved in games and play. Overall, the article highlights the multiple types of pleasure associated with ballet dancing as a key motivational factor and rationale for participation.

Kinematic and Kinetic Analysis of the Fouetté Turn in Classical Ballet

The fouetté turn in classical ballet dancing is a continuous turn with the whipping of the gesture leg and the arms and the bending and stretching of the supporting leg. The knowledge of the movement intensities of both legs for the turn would be favorable for the conditioning of the dancer’s body. The purpose of this study was to estimate the intensities. The hypothesis of this study was that the intensities were higher in the supporting leg than in the gesture leg. The joint torques of both legs were determined in the turns performed by seven experienced female classical ballet dancers with inverse dynamics using three high-speed cine cameras and a force platform. The hip abductor torque, knee extensor and plantar flexor torques of the supporting leg were estimated to be exerted up to their maximum levels and the peaks of the torques were larger than the peaks of their matching torques of the gesture leg. Thus, the hypothesis was partly supported. Training of the supporting leg rather than the gesture leg would help ballet dancers perform many revolutions of the fouetté turn continuously.