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Sensing Movement: Contemporary Dance Workshops with People who are Blind or have Low Vision and Dance Teachers

Madhuka Thisuri De Silva, Jim Smiley, Sarah Goodwin, Leona M Holloway, Matthew Butler

TL;DR

The paper addresses how BLV individuals can access Contemporary dance through multi-sensory technologies. It uses five teacher–BLV dancer workshops with tactile objects, sound-based sonification, and vibrotactile haptics to explore four learning goals: learning a phrase, improvisation, collaboration, and body-movement awareness. The study yields design considerations (DC1–DC5) and practical insights on mappings, training, and the balance of modalities, highlighting sonification and tactile/haptic artefacts as central to enabling embodied dance learning for BLV participants. The findings inform future accessible-dance design by identifying how multi-sensory cues can support instruction, improvisation, and co-creation, with implications for education, group dynamics, and technology deployment in dance spaces.

Abstract

Dance teachers rely primarily on verbal instructions and visual demonstrations to convey key dance concepts and movement. These techniques, however, have limitations in supporting students who are blind or have low vision (BLV). This work explores the role technology can play in supporting instruction for BLV students, as well as improvisation with their instructor. Through a series of design workshops with dance instructors and BLV students, ideas were generated by physically engaging with probes featuring diverse modalities including tactile objects, a body tracked sound and musical probe, and a body tracked controller with vibrational feedback. Implications for the design of supporting technologies were discovered for four contemporary dance learning goals: learning a phrase; improvising; collaborating through movement; and awareness of body and movement qualities. We discuss the potential of numerous multi-sensory methods and artefacts, and present design considerations for technologies to support meaningful dance instruction and participation.

Sensing Movement: Contemporary Dance Workshops with People who are Blind or have Low Vision and Dance Teachers

TL;DR

The paper addresses how BLV individuals can access Contemporary dance through multi-sensory technologies. It uses five teacher–BLV dancer workshops with tactile objects, sound-based sonification, and vibrotactile haptics to explore four learning goals: learning a phrase, improvisation, collaboration, and body-movement awareness. The study yields design considerations (DC1–DC5) and practical insights on mappings, training, and the balance of modalities, highlighting sonification and tactile/haptic artefacts as central to enabling embodied dance learning for BLV participants. The findings inform future accessible-dance design by identifying how multi-sensory cues can support instruction, improvisation, and co-creation, with implications for education, group dynamics, and technology deployment in dance spaces.

Abstract

Dance teachers rely primarily on verbal instructions and visual demonstrations to convey key dance concepts and movement. These techniques, however, have limitations in supporting students who are blind or have low vision (BLV). This work explores the role technology can play in supporting instruction for BLV students, as well as improvisation with their instructor. Through a series of design workshops with dance instructors and BLV students, ideas were generated by physically engaging with probes featuring diverse modalities including tactile objects, a body tracked sound and musical probe, and a body tracked controller with vibrational feedback. Implications for the design of supporting technologies were discovered for four contemporary dance learning goals: learning a phrase; improvising; collaborating through movement; and awareness of body and movement qualities. We discuss the potential of numerous multi-sensory methods and artefacts, and present design considerations for technologies to support meaningful dance instruction and participation.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 60 sections, 4 figures, 3 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Body Movement and Dance Educational Practices for BLV People
  4. Tactile Tech for Body Movement Learning
  5. Auditory Tech for Body Movement Learning
  6. Haptic Tech and Multi-sensory Tech Body Movement Learning
  7. Method
  8. Participants
  9. Researcher Positionality
  10. Workshop Structure, Pre-engagement and Participants’ Engagement
  11. Sensory probes
  12. Tactile
  13. Auditory
  14. Haptic
  15. Data Analysis
  16. ...and 45 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Workshop structure showing time spent on activities during the workshop (legend indicating the activity), idea generation instances (light bulbs), inter 'Links' (L) occurred between the workshops (L1-L3), and intra 'Links' occurred within a workshop (L4, L5). Durations are rounded to the nearest 5 minutes and breaks are not shown.
  • Figure 2: Objects provided as tactile probes are displayed in the image on the left. Images on the right starting from top, (a) tensegrity structure, (b) a ball with nodules, (c) raintube were frequently used and discussed by the participants.
  • Figure 3: The setup for the sound and haptic probe explorations consisting Motion capture (Mocap) cameras indicated by square frames, speakers indicated by circular frames and tracking gloves worn by student indicated by a triangular frame. The BLV student stands on the left of the teacher who is standing on the right of the image.
  • Figure 4: Image on the left represents the vibration controller that allowed the teacher to trigger vibration on the student's device by pressing a circular tactile resistive pad. Image next is the haptic device that lets the student feel both the feedback based on tracked data and teacher's cues based from the controller.