Keep on Dancing

[This is cross-posted on our Dance Craft website]

I made the trek across campus today to meet with Professor Andrew Palermo in UC Irvine’s Dance Department. I briefly pitched him our idea and explained what we could do with the Kinect. We talked about the dance classes he teaches at the local autism center. His classes consist of one part neurotypical dance class, one part partner dancing tailored to kids with autism, and one part dance routine. The dance routine is a composition of steps created by each person in the class. After our discussion, I am more excited than ever to move forward with our Dance Craft application for Kinect.

For our prototype that we will be demonstrating for the Autism AppJam, we will be creating an application that will encourage creative movement in the player/user. We will be focusing on something that can be used at home, outside of the dance class, to bring the creative motion out of the classroom and into the daily lives of the children. The great thing about this software is that set up and use will be fairly inexpensive for the typical. All that is needed is a computer to run the program, a Kinect, and a monitor/television.

I will leave you with a video of the inspiration behind Professor Palermo’s dance classes- a choreography called beyond.words: