DanceStepper

DanceStepper AR

The Labanotation dance scores you entered are animated in the Augmented Reality View by humanoid characters. Uncover the back camera on iPhone/iPad and work in a large lighted floor space for good experience of the animated view. The app detects a horizontal plane for floor and places two 6-foot tall humanoid characters on the floor, blue for the leader and red for follower. The yellow line represents the Line-of-Dance. The Labanaotation staffs for steps are overlayed at the left and right edges of the view with voice-over counting the timing or the steps.

User Interaction

Controls: The UI controls are overlayed on animation view at the top and bottom of the display. The UI controls get hidden during the animation leaving the Labanotation staffs. Tap on the screen to hide Labanotion staffs. Successive taps on the screen hide and restore the overlay information.
Dance Selection: Dances and the figures are selected by the picker controls.
Voice-over Controls: Tap on speaker buttons and to toggle the voice-over on/off ... See Notes.. Long_Press on the buttons to select the voice-over option. Possible options are: Time, Leader notation, or Follower notation.
Speed Control: Tap on the speed control button hare to run the animation at 120 BPM. The tortoise button slows it down to 60 BPM. Long_Press on the button to select stride. There are three options for the stride: Narrow, Normal, and Wide.
Play and Stop Animation: The play button toggles the animation on-off. Note that there may be some delay in the response for the Stop button.
Play in Continuous Loop: The repeat button repeats the selected animation. To stop the repetion toggle the repeat button.
Exit Animation: Tap on on top right of the screen to exit the animation and return to the score editor.

Notes

Voice-over: The voice-over is generated by speech synthesizer by using the voice selected in device Accessibility settings. However, it was found not all voices are working on the current version of the IOS. Currently, the voices "Alex" and "Agnes" seem to work on most devices and IOS versions. It is to be hoped that future IOS revisions will correct this issue.
Animation Model: Human body is highy complex and developed structure capable of expressing dance poses in infinite variations. Describing a pose in a 3-D space on a written score sheet is highly challenging. Animation of the score by humonoid characters is even more challenging. In real life the dance partners follow a set sequence of motions but they constantly adjust their positions to stay in alignment and to achive the desired pose. The humanoid characters of this app follow and animate only what is on the score sheet and they they don't have the human intution to adjust. They are not aware that their partner even exists! The characters are a collection of basic geometric shapes assembeld into low degree of freedom structures. They don't show the agility of human body which has highly complex skeletal structure. The movement of hands and feet may seem akward in some poses because they they don't have the flexibility and natural constraints of the human body.