Automatic Composition by Body-Part Motion Synthesis for Supporting Dance Creation

This paper describes a system for supporting the creation of contemporary dance choreography using 3D motion data acquired by motion capture. We developed a system that automatically generates short choreographies by combining a basic motion with multiple body-part motions. The generated choreographies are simulated in 3D animation. It runs on a tablet, so users can select a basic motion and body-part categories by touch operations. The motions are selected and synthesized to the base motion at random timing. To reduce the partial motion synthesis and increase the variety of the generated choreographies, the synthesis timing is adjusted. We experimentally evaluated the effectiveness of our system with eight dancers. From questionnaire results gathered after the experiment, we received many comments about the effectiveness for creation of dance, training of dance techniques, and understanding of dance movements.