Edith Cowan University (ECU) has set up a motion capture facility on its Mount Lawley campus. The new facility is a bonus for dance students and teachers at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, which is also based on the Mount Lawley campus.
The motion capture facility works by using tiny markers on dancers’ bodies to map their movements in 3D and create a video. Dancers and teachers can then view the video to analyse performance. Resident biomechanist Dr Luke Hopper says he hopes that the facility will assist dancers both in refining technique and preventing injuries.
“What makes motion capture at Mount Lawley unique is that we have access to a large cohort of talented dancers, in addition to scientific and artistic academics who are willing and able to use the lab in the investigation of the prevention of dance injuries," Hopper remarks. “This opportunity will allow us to ask the questions of whether a particular movement style will predispose a dancer to injury and can we measure how dancers’ movement proficiency improves as they progress through their training. Here we hope to provide a new form of visual feedback to the dancers’ of their movements using motion capture and see if this improves learning in dance training. The lab also has the capacity to record specific choreographic works as an archive for other choreographers to refer to in future productions.”
WAAPA dance lecturer Andries Weidemann is excited about the possibilities the motion capture facility presents. “Dancers learn by watching, copying and experimenting with movement on their own until they have integrated that movement into patterns that they can replicate easily,” he observes. “Seeing their motion captured and placed on an avatar gives the students a perspective that they have not had before and that this can lead to new insights about their performance. At the moment we are looking at creating an integrated performance segment that involves capturing motion and creatively developing it into a film clip. As we do this we will have a choreographer creating movement for dancers that is performed simultaneously to the clip being projected in the performance. In a sense, the motion capture will become one of the performers in the piece.”
Dr Luke Hopper and WAAPA dance student Valenina Markovinovic demonstrate the new motion capture facility.
