How do Dancers Want to Use Interactive Technology?: Appropriation and Layers of Meaning Beyond Traditional Movement Mapping

There has been an increased interest in HCI research regarding the possibilities of interactive technology applied to the field of dance performance, particularly contemporary dance. This has produced numerous strategies to capture data from the moving bodies of the dancers and to map that data into different types of display formats. In this paper, we look at the role of interactive technology in dance performance from a broader perspective, aiming at understanding the needs of dancers and their relation with the audience. To this end, we ran a focus group with ten dancers with expertise in technology. We analysed the focus group using thematic analysis. We discuss the implications for design of our results by framing the role of technology in dance performance, proposing design guidelines related to the communication to the audience, use of technology, and mapping. Moreover, we propose different levels of ambiguity and appropriation related to the creators of the performance and the audience.