Moving, annotating, learning: MotionNotes LabDays - a case study

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how dance annotation practices might expand and shape teaching and learning in dance performance and training environments. We focus on a central case study: the MotionNotes LabDay workshops that took place within the context of the EU-funded project, CultureMoves (2018–2020). CultureMoves was an interdisciplinary project investigating connections between dance, site, cultural heritage and digital storytelling. The project developed a series of digital tools for articulating the effects of technology on dance praxis alongside a close ethnographic reading of archival cultural heritage data from Europe's digital library, Europeana. The focus of this article is on MotionNotes, a web-based annotator for dance videos/streams where multiple annotation track timelines include text, images/marks, URL, drawings and voice annotation. The MotionNotes practical LabDay sessions revealed three main areas of possibility for the annotator: in the teaching of dance material, in the remaking and transmission of existing work and as a choreographic tool for creating new work. Across all three areas, the multimodal learning possibilities offered by annotation reflected visual perceptions of live dance practice and also prompted dance artists and learners to think differently about their dance making, teaching and learning processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Dance
• annotation
• CultureMoves
• cultural heritage
• digital tools

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Digital storytelling is a short form of media production whereby various digital media (digital video, audio, photographic stills and other non-physical media) are employed and/or combined within a narrative structure to tell a story or present an idea.

2 The MotionNotes tool emerged from the work that our CultureMoves colleague Carla Fernandes had been doing with her team at UNL (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal). Fernandes’ previous work on the ERC-funded project Blackbox: Arts & Cognition (2014–2019) demonstrates the long history of her research into the different ways in which the process of annotation can support the digital documentation of the various compositional processes involved in dance making. For more on Motion Notes, see further Rodrigues et al. (2019).

3 A central question here relates to the ethics of what occurs when dance becomes data. Once data from a dancing body is collected and stored for repurposing, as it is with the annotator tool, care is required for the ethical re-use and dissemination of this data, whether this be for creative or educational purposes: see further, Cisneros, Crawley, and Wood (forthcoming).

4 https://slanjayvahdanza.com A short video documenting the Slanjayvah Danza Labday can be accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k48FCy-zolg

5 When thinking about dance as intangible cultural heritage, we might begin to think of this embodied knowledge held in the dancer's body also in terms of the body's archival capacities (cf. Lepecki 2010; Griffiths 2014).

6 http://www.a2company.org/anton_mirto.htm

7 https://www.amyvoris.com

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Connecting Europe Facility: [Grant Number 1568369].

Notes on contributors

Rosemary (Rosa) Cisneros

Rosemary (Rosa) Kostic Cisneros is a researcher, dancer, filmmaker and curator who works closely with the RomArchive and many NGOs. She is leading various EU-funded projects which aim to make education accessible to vulnerable groups and ethnic minorities, and cultural heritage projects that bring dance and digital technologies together. University Profile:https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/persons/rosamaria-kostic-cisneros

Marie-Louise Crawley

Marie-Louise Crawley is Assistant Professor in Dance and Cultural Engagement at the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University. Her research interests include dance and museums, and areas of intersection between Archaeology, Classics and Dance Studies.https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/persons/marie-louise-crawley