Cultural Movement Database - Sani Dance

Sponsored by:
Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs

Participants
Maria Palazzi, Director of ACCAD
Brian Windsor, Motion Capture Supervisor, ACCAD
Mark Bender, Interpreter and Host to Professor Huang, East Asian Languages and Literature
Huang Jianming, Performer, Central Nationalities University, Beijing
Hyun Jung Chae, GRA, Department of Dance

Project: ACCAD is using it's motion capture capabilities to put together a database of culturally important motions. By archiving these important motions using a combination of motion capture and digital video, we can not only have a good 2D reference, but also a good 3D reference. The ability to view the motion from any viewpoint expands the ability to
examine, learn from, and preserve these dances.

On October 28, 2003, Mark Bender of Ohio State University Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures had Professor Huang Jianming (Central Nationalities University, Beijing) here for a visit. We were fortunate enough to have Prof. Huang drop by for some motion capture. Prof. Huang performed four culturally significant dances from the Sani
people. The Sani people are located in Shilin County, near the Stone Forest tourist site in Yunnan Province, SW China. The dances were the young male dance, young female dance, elder man dance, and elder woman dance.

ACCAD hopes to expand the cultural database by having more collaborations with varied departments in the university. ACCAD hopes that we can not only archive these sets of data, but also repatriate the dances back to native peoples that may have lost contact with their culture(s).