abstract: Transformation Is... is an arts practice-led research in Dance and Design, embodying and materializing concepts of structure, leadership and agency and their role in bringing about desired social transformation. My personal experiences as a foreign student interested in transformative experiences gave origin to this arts practice-led research. An auto-ethnographic approach informed by grounded theory methods shaped this creative inquiry in which dance was looked at as data and rehearsals became research fields. Within the context of social choreography, a transformational leadership style was applied to promote agency using improvisational movement scores to shape individual and collective creative explorations. These explorations gave birth to a flexible and transformable dance installation that served as a metaphor for social structure. Transformation revealed itself in this research as a sequence of process and product oriented stages that resulted in a final performance piece in which a site-specific interactive installation was built before the audience's eyes. This work became a metaphor of how individual actions and interactions effect the construction of social reality and how inner-transformation and collaboration are key in the process of designing and building new egalitarian social structures. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. Dance 2014

In the last decade, many studies and performances within the field of interactive dance have been made. Interactive dance means involving technology into the dance, which opens opportunities to execute a dance in another way than used to. The studies in the past have often involved manipulation of music, but not many studies seem to involve manipulating real-time music produced by a live musician. Hence, this study consisted of a musician and a dancer investigating in the co-play between the two artists through sensory technology in a project called SENSITIV. More specifically, the investigation focused on the input design, i.e. the placement and processing of the motion sensors, for an interactive system, and how the involvement of the sensory technology affects the dance. Inertia-based motion sensors were worn by the dancer, by which the real-time sound produced by the musician was manipulated through the movements of the dancer. This created in turn an interaction within the intermediate connection, where the dancer came to act as a co-musician. Two studies were conducted, where in the first study a prototype was developed and designed in a first-person perspective, and the second study tested the developed prototype on a larger group of dancers. The results showed that placement on the outer parts, such as wrist and ankles, were the most suitable. It was further found that for reaching a positive experience, in terms of feeling in control with dancing with sensors involved, it requires some time as having an understanding and knowledge of the system is needed. / Under det senaste årtiondet har många studier och projekt gjorts inom interaktiv dans. Interaktiv dans betyder att involvera teknik till dansen, vilket öppnar upp många möjligheter till att utföra dans på annat sätt än vad man vanligtvis är van vid. Många av dessa studier har ofta involverat manipulation av musik men få verkar ha involverat realtidsmusik producerat av en live-musiker. Därför har denna studie utförts tillsammans med en musiker och dansare för att undersöka samspelet mellan dessa två parter genom sensorteknik i ett utformat projekt kallat för SENSITIV. Mer specifikt så har undersökningen haft fokus på input-designen, dvs. placeringen och bearbetningen av sensorerna, för ett interaktivt system, samt hur involveringen av sensorteknik påverkar dansen. Rörelsesensorer var burna av dansaren som på så vis kunde genom sina rörelser manipulera realtidsmusiken som var producerad av musikern. Detta skapade i sin tur en interaktion i den mellanliggande förbindelsen, där dansaren kom att agera som en medmusiker. Två studier var uppförda där den första hade fokus på att utforma och utveckla en prototyp ur ett förstapersonsperspektiv, medan den andra studien hade fokus på att testa prototypen på en större grupp av dansare. Resultaten visade att placering av sensorer på de yttre kroppsdelarna, så som armar och ben, var mest lämpligt. För att nå en positiv upplevelse i termer av att känna kontroll med att dansa med sensorer, visade det sig att denna prototyp krävde mer tid att bli utforskad då en förståelse och kunskap av systemet behövdes.

abstract: When dancers are granted agency over music, as in interactive dance systems, the actors are most often concerned with the problem of creating a staged performance for an audience. However, as is reflected by the above quote, the practice of Argentine tango social dance is most concerned with participants internal experience and their relationship to the broader tango community. In this dissertation I explore creative approaches to enrich the sense of connection, that is, the experience of oneness with a partner and complete immersion in music and dance for Argentine tango dancers by providing agency over musical activities through the use of interactive technology. Specifically, I create an interactive dance system that allows tango dancers to affect and create music via their movements in the context of social dance. The motivations for this work are multifold: 1) to intensify embodied experience of the interplay between dance and music, individual and partner, couple and community, 2) to create shared experience of the conventions of tango dance, and 3) to innovate Argentine tango social dance practice for the purposes of education and increasing musicality in dancers. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2017

Engaging in the music set of one’s favorite artist or DJ is oftentimes leading to the result of a powerful and euphoric felt experience, a sensation partly also induced from dancing in beat to the music. In an attempt to simulate a similar dance experience, a user-study was designed in order to investigate when a user is let to dance in rhythm to a music playback and in addition, in control of a music playback tempo through the induced dance movements. A proof-of-concept prototype was built and tested in an initial study, followed by a main study where the prototype had been modified and 12 participants participated. A questionnaire was given containing various question statements to be rated through a Likert-scale regarding their subjective experience. Open-ended questions were also included to collect their own opinions. From the results, an enhanced engagement and enjoyment of the music could be identified when being able to manipulate the tempo. / Att engagera sig i ett musikset av ens favoritartist eller DJ leder ofta till resultatet av en kraftfull och euforisk känsloupplevelse, en känsla delvis framkallat av att man dansar i takt med musiken. I ett försök att simulera en liknande dansupplevelse undersöker denna användarstudie när en användare dansar i rytm till musik och dessutom är i kontroll av tempot genom de skapade dansrörelserna. En proof-of-concept prototyp konstruerades och testades i en första studie, följt av en huvudstudie där prototypen hade modifierats och 12 deltagare deltog. Ett frågeformulär gavs med olika frågor som skulle bedömas via en Likert-skala, med avseende på deras subjektiva erfarenhet. Öppna frågor ingick också för att samla deras egna åsikter. Från resultaten kunde ett ökat engagemang och en förhöjd njutning av musiken identifieras när man kunde manipulera tempot.

My work focuses on taking a single person as input and predicting the intentional movement of one dance partner based on the other dance partner's movement. Human pose estimation has been applied to dance and computer vision, but many existing applications focus on a single individual or multiple individuals performing. Currently there are very few works that focus specifically on dance couples combined with pose prediction. This thesis is applicable to the entertainment and gaming industry by training people to dance with a virtual dance partner. Many existing interactive or virtual dance partners require a motion capture system, multiple cameras or a robot which creates an expensive cost. This thesis does not use a motion capture system and combines OpenPose with swing dance YouTube videos to create a virtual dance partner. By taking in the current dancer's moves as input, the system predicts the dance partner's corresponding moves in the video frames. In order to create a virtual dance partner, datasets that contain information about the skeleton keypoints are necessary to predict a dance partner's pose. There are existing dance datasets for a specific type of dance, but these datasets do not cover swing dance. Furthermore, the dance datasets that do include swing have a limited number of videos. The contribution of this thesis is a large swing dataset that contains three different types of swing dance: East Coast, Lindy Hop and West Coast. I also provide a basic framework to extend the work to create a real-time and interactive dance partner.

Technology has during the last decades been adopted into the dance art form which has appeared as interactive dance. Many studies and performances have been conducted investigating this merging of dance and technology and the mapping of the motion data to other modalities. But none have previously explored how the introduction of technology affects the mutually interdependent relationship, the co-play, between a dancer and a live musician in a completely live setting. This thesis specifically explores this novel stting by investigating which sound parameters of a live drummer’s sound a dancer should be able to manipulate, through the usage of motion tracking sensors, to alter the dancer’s experience positively in comparison of without the usage of the tool. For this purpose, two studies have been conducted. First, a development study to create a prototype from the first person perspective of a professional dancer and choreographer. Second, an evaluative study was conducted to evaluate the applicability of the prototype and the experience of the manipulation of the sound parameters chosen, on a larger group of professional dancers. The studies showed that the sound parameters of delay and pitch altered a dance experience most positively. This thesis further shows that it is important for the user to get enough time to truly get to know the interactions allowed by the system, to actually be able to evaluate experience of the sound parameters. / Teknik har under de senaste decennierna anammats in i danskonsten vilket har framträtt som interaktiv dans. Många studier och föreställningar har genomförts för att undersöka denna sammanslagning av dans och teknik, och mappningen av rörelsedata till andra modaliteter. Men ingen har tidigare undersökt hur introduktionen av teknik påverkar samspelet, den ömsesidigt beroende relationen, mellan en dansare och en live-musiker i en fullständigt live inramning. Den här avhandlingen utforskar specifikt denna nya inramning genom att undersöka vilka ljudparametrar av en live-trummis ljud en dansare ska kunna manipulera genom användning av rörelsesensorer, för att förändra en dansarens upplevelse positivt i jämförelse med utan användning av verktyget. För detta ändamål har två studier genomförts. Först en utvecklingsstudie för att skapa en prototyp från ett förstapersonsperspektiv av en professionell dansare och koreograf. Sedan genomfördes en utvärderingsstudie för att utvärdera användbarheten av prototypen och upplevelsen av att manipulera de valda ljudparametrarna, på en större grupp professionella dansare. Studierna visade att ljudparametrarna av fördröjning och tonhöjd förändrade en dansupplevelse mest positivt. Denna avhandling visar vidare att det är viktig för användaren att få tillräckligt med tid för att verkligen lära känna de interaktioner som systemet tillåter, för att faktiskt kunna utvärdera upplevelsen av själva ljudparametrarna.

Engaging in the music set of one’s favorite artist or DJ is oftentimes leading to the result of a powerful and euphoric felt experience, a sensation partly also induced from dancing in beat to the music. In an attempt to simulate a similar dance experience, this user-study examines when a user is let to dance in rhythm to a music playback and in addition, in control of a music playback tempo through the generated dance movements. A proof-of-concept prototype was built and tested in an initial study, followed by a main study where the prototype had been modified and 12 participants participated. A questionnaire was given containing various question statements to be rated through a Likert-scale regarding their subjective experience. Open-ended questions were also included to collect their own opinions. From the results, an enhanced engagement and enjoyment of the music could be identified when being able to manipulate the tempo. / Att engagera sig i ett musik-set av ens favoritartist eller DJ leder ofta till resultatet av en kraftfull och euforisk känsloupplevelse, en känsla delvis framkallat av att man dansar i takt med musiken. I ett försök att simulera en liknande dansupplevelse undersöker denna användarstudie när en användare dansar i rytm till musik och dessutom är i kontroll av tempot genom de skapade dansrörelserna. En proof-of-concept prototyp konstruerades och testades i en första studie, följt av en huvudstudie där prototypen hade modifierats och 12 deltagare deltog. Ett frågeformulär gavs med olika frågor som skulle bedömas via en Likert-skala, med avseende på deras subjektiva erfarenhet. Öppna frågor ingick också för att samla deras egna åsikter. Från resultaten kunde ett ökat engagemang och en förhöjd njutning av musiken identifieras när man kunde manipulera tempot.