The below is an expanded and updated version of a piece previously posted on AR Insider (arinsider.co), shared here with permission.
Picture a ballet dancer switching costumes mid-movement. Imagine trainees in a yoga teacher training seeing which muscles engage and stretch in various poses, through images of working muscles superimposed on a trainee’s body as they practice those poses. Imagine a personal trainer being able to similarly show a client the most efficient and effective pathways of muscular engagement through superimposed visuals of working muscles.
Is this science fiction? With the AR technology of body tracking, it could be reality.
Whether or not it will be seems to be less of a question of the technology (though it certainly has room to grow) than of if that technology can scale in these movement-based sectors: dance, yoga, and fitness. Realities such as tight budgets and reluctance to shift from the status quo in certain spaces could present big challenges towards that scaling.
On the other hand, an interest in exploration and a creative drive characterize all of these fields. If AR professionals can tap into that – and also work with these movement-based sectors, coming to understand their needs and challenges – body tracking could be a game-changer for how we work out, appreciate the art of the moving human body, and even how we feel and function as we walk through the world each day.
My experience and perspective
Before we go any further, you might wonder where my perspective and expertise come from. I’ve been a dancer for twenty years, and a yoga practitioner for fifteen. I have a BA in Dance and an MA in Dance/Movement Therapy. I’m an RYT 200 (certified to teach yoga) and an R-DMT (Registered Dance/Movement Therapist). I’m also a dance educator, teaching dance forms from ballet to jazz to contemporary, to youth and adult students. I’ve also taught fitness forms ranging from Pilates to Barre to Cardio Dance.
I’ve additionally written about dance, yoga, movement, and wellness for various publications. It’s been an honor and privilege to grow a wide network of artists, dance companies, and yoga instructors / enthusiasts across various locales. Through all of that, I’ve always been fascinated with how dance and movement intersects with various other disciplines (those in and out of other artistic media).
For example, in my college senior year, I choreographed a piece exploring the grandeur and visual wonder of extraterrestrial bodies: from comets to planets to stars to black holes (represented by visual projections, the score, and the movement itself). Still to this day, as a reviewer and dance enthusiast, some of my favorite works have been those that similarly merge dance and other disciplines (technological, artistic, and other) to explore or say something new about the world in which we live.
What’s body tracking, and should body-based professionals care?
Enough about me – let’s get back to discussing the implications of body tracking and movement modalities. To start from square one, what is body tracking? Broadly speaking, the technology allows for layering visuals (be they clothing, gear, or other effects) onto moving bodies through AR. Think Snapchat selfie filters expanded from the face to the whole body.
The ability to layer on visuals through augmented reality – just as Pokemon Go adds Pokemon to one’s surroundings – could have just about exponential potential in sectors that involve the body: dance (concert and commercial), yoga, and fitness. [A lot of what I’m discussing also applies to Somatics – from the Alexander Technique to Laban Movement Analysis – but there’s enough complexity there that it lies outside of this article’s scope. Same with the medical field – I’ll leave it to medical professionals to discuss that.]
Body tracking could fundamentally change key aspects such as education, creative/artistic output, and accessibility within these fields: I think, though some may disagree, for the better.
Body tracking and movement modalities: education and training
Education that involves the body, in deep and complex ways, takes place from university classrooms to dance and yoga studios to gyms where personal trainers and fitness instructors learn their craft.
Here, I think back to classes in my college Dance major (largely Modern/Postmodern, stylistically speaking) – especially those in which we would take movement very slow and really key into awareness of movement pathways, muscular engagement and release, and alignment of body parts. We had a life-size medical skeleton in the closet, which would help us with some sort of visual in these types of classes (and yes, we had some fun with it too).
Yet I believe that having visuals like those which body tracking can offer – superimposed on our moving bodies – could have helped my peers and I get an even deeper understanding of what we were exploring and learning about, faster and easier. For example, with a high kick to the side, body tracking could have shown us the muscles that are raising and externally rotating (turning to the side) the leg in flight. That awareness, supported by a concrete and immersive visual, could mean game-changing improvements to dance technique and artistry.
That same dynamic could play out in body-based training and education more broadly: including yoga teacher, fitness instructor, and personal trainer trainings. Interestingly, not all those who take such trainings intend to ever teach or offer training sessions; sometimes they just want an opportunity to learn about the modality at hand more deeply. That could help bring the revenue and interest needed to help the use of body tracking in these sorts of trainings scale (more on that later).
Body tracking and Dance/Movement Therapy
Dance/Movement Therapy is a body-based modality within Expressive Arts Therapies, which leverage the arts and creativity to helps patients and clients ease various mental and physical conditions, or to simply live fuller lives and reach closer to their potential.
Within Dance/Movement Therapy sessions, the first step is building the therapeutic relationship – which allows the patient/client to put trust in the therapist. Body tracking could aid in this relationship-building though applying something fun and creative, all while beginning to lead the client/patient to greater connection with and awareness of their bodies. Then the therapeutic work can truly begin.
How can body tracking apply in that work? With clients/patients experiencing things like body image issues, or more serious body dysmorphia or eating disorders, for example, how a client uses body tracking on their own bodies could be truly meaningful communication. That could help the therapist better understand what the person at hand is experiencing. It could even guide the person to their own therapeutic breakthroughs.
It could also remain simply fun and creative, so that the client/patient might not even feel like this is “therapy.” That could all be particularly impactful with child, pre-teen, and teen clients/patients, not to mention those with communication challenges and other disabilities. No approach is clinically indicated (appropriate and helpful) in all cases – but with some cases that Dance/Movement Therapists see, body tracking could be paradigm-shifting.
Body tracking in concert dance, live and on film
Dance artists, like all artists, are always exploring how to translate meaning in fresh, innovative ways. Sometimes that involves cutting-edge technology. For instance, larger-scale companies such as Boston Ballet and Martha Graham Dance Company have worked with VR in creative experimentation. Dance and AR even appears in a Ted™ presentation, through the imaginative and memorable work of Particle Ink: check it out!
Smaller boutique companies such as Arch Contemporary Ballet have used AR-like effects to build atmosphere, as well as expand access to the work (such as for deaf and hard-of-hearing audience members), in various programming that they’ve presented. Boston-based artist Lonnie Stanton, through the collective The Click, recently presented an AR-based dance work called Emotive Land – bringing both the movement and the setting to brighter life through AR. [I’m hoping to write more about this work in the coming months – stay tuned!]
Towards expanding accessibility, layering other art forms on top of moving bodies – such as words, musical notes, or sound waves – could help concert performances get closer to what’s called universal design (where all audience members, no matter any mental or physical disability, can experience a performance like fully-able people can). For all audience members, the ability to change the aesthetic of a dancing body or bodies – before our very eyes – seems to have limitless creative potential.
Like with all aspects of dance art, the effect might not might be quite the same with dance film (which, for safety and logistical reasons, has proliferated since COVID first hit). Yet it could help build aesthetic and atmosphere in dance films in quite innovative, effective ways. Dance artists have shown themselves to be notably excited and ready to explore such innovation in the past couple of years.
In other practical matters, body tracking could help ease some big headaches for choreographers as they realize their vision. For example, being able to see how a costume looks on a dancer (and even in conjunction with design aspects such as lighting) before costumes are made for a whole ensemble could save a whole lot of time and money.
Body tracking could also make the grant allocation process – which can have artists feeling like the mythical Atlas, constantly working through sometimes arduous and confusing processes for little to no return – a lot smoother. If innovators can figure out how body tracking could be an easier way for dance artists to demonstrate their vision to grant-allocating foundations and institutions (perhaps through film with body tracking, which grant reviewers can watch), that could be incredibly meaningful.
Can it scale, though?: challenges to body tracking adoption in movement sectors
Yet, in all those discussed use cases and sectors, the technology, finances, and logistics at hand (for example, do all audience members need a certain program already downloaded on their device to experience a choreographer’s vision?) would need to work out in order for that potential to play out for all involved. Apart from the challenges of honing body tracking as a technology in and of itself, it has to scale for the economics to work out for those in movement-based fields.
With dance in particular, available funds is always a constant challenge, given the ratios of costs to produce creative, educational, or wellness-directed content and what those offerings bring in. Concert dance, for one, can be expensive to produce but make little in ticket sales (grants, as mentioned, often help to make up the difference).
With yoga and fitness, wealthy enthusiasts/clients and profitable apparel/gear brands have cash to spare. Yet many entities in these sectors are small businesses with razor-thin profit margins. They might believe that they can’t take the fiscal gamble on something like body tracking.
So body tracking has to develop and become ubiquitous enough generally for costs to drop to where it can scale within these sectors themselves. In other words, it might have to get big outside of these fields before it can get big inside of them. Apart from that, the investment of scarce resources has to seem undoubtedly worth it to body-based professionals.
Then there’s the question of openness to the technology, money aside. There are many forward-thinking people in these fields (arguably, that forward-thinking quality is inherent to them all in some way). At the same time, particularly in larger institutions such as universities and institutes, traditional mindsets remain. So buy-in there, which comes along with many vital stakeholders such as university department chairs, could be a challenge.
How can the AR field overcome those obstacles? For one, the right messaging is key. Part of that, I’d argue, would be a “show rather than tell” approach: making demonstrations of benefits immersive and based in rich sensory experience. That’s a language that creatives and others in these fields speak.
AR professionals also have to be careful to not assume that they know what professionals in body-based fields need or want – which could be very different from what conventional tech and/or business wisdom would dictate. Open, engaged conversation and collaboration are indispensable here. Thankfully, those are generally key values and capacities within these fields. AR folks have to meet them there.
Why should AR professionals care?
Pardon me while I put on my Dance/Movement Therapist hat here for a moment: we, as a society, are tragically disembodied. That means that we’re disconnected from our body’s needs, wants, and even capacities. Ever heard about someone crying after their first yoga class (and not from physical pain)? That’s a sign of that disconnection fading away: revealing all that’s been neglected as we rush through our days, overwork ourselves, and ignore all the wonder that our body has to share.
All of that has massive implications for how we treat each other and ourselves, and how we – or how we don’t – reach closer to our potentials. Yes, there’s empirical research there, but I’ll spare you on that for now.
You might know what I’m getting at: AR professionals engaging with body-based fields might very well be more altruistic than wildly profitable. If body tracking can help us to be a more embodied society – building understanding and deeper connection to our body, in aesthetically pleasing and fun ways – then AR could make a big difference for society at large.
From a more practical marketing standpoint, that altruism could put social “good will” points on the board for individual companies and the AR sector at large. Making a difference can be good business. I might be biased, but I believe that Western culture has sadly underestimated the power of the moving body. AR can rise above that misguided norm and very possibly do quite well for itself and do good for the world.
Images courtesy of Canva and the author