The Kinesemiotic Body
Working alongside the ENB (English National Ballet) and Bremen University this project explores the projections of meaning embodied in the movement of ballet dancers.
The research involves sensor data collection, analysis, and documentation of meaning, using the FGD (Formal Grammar of Dance) as a structure.
The Kinesemiotic body is an interdisciplinary project funded jointly by the AHRC and DFG (German Research Foundation) involving academics from English (Dr Arianna Maiorani), Engineering (Prof Max Zecca), and Computer Science (Dr Russell Lock), working alongside academics from Bremen University (Prof John Bateman) and professional ballet dancers at the English National Ballet, including First Soloist Junor Souza.
Working with Noitom’s Perception Neuron Motion Capture technology, we are attempting to capture the meaningful projections of ballet dancers, be they emotive or descriptive, and to structure and study them using the Formal Grammar of Dance (developed by Dr Arianna Maiorani). In doing so we will develop new approaches to the digital formal modelling of ballet, and aim to improve audience understanding of ballet through the development & empirical evaluation of tools to project meaning clearly to an audience. In doing so we will provide a rich semantic dataset for the next generation of researchers.