Ballerinas are stepping into sensor suits so one Christmas you may be able to understand the nuanced messages of The Nutcracker

Throughout the festive season, countless individuals delight in the enchantment of ballet spectacles such as ‘The Nutcracker’.

Though the stories of timeless performances are widely known, general audiences often miss the subtle narratives and emotions dancers seek to convey through body movements – and they miss even more when the narratives are not based on well-known stories.

This prompts the question: how can dance performances become more accessible for people who are not specialists?

Researchers think they have the answer – and it involves putting dancers in sensor suits.

Loughborough University academics are working with the English National Ballet and the University of Bremen to develop software that will allow people to understand the deeper meanings of performances by watching annotated CGI videos of different dances.

Leading this endeavour is former professional ballerina Dr Arianna Maiorani, an expert in 'Kinesemiotics - the study of meaning conveyed through movement – and the creator of the 'Functional Grammar of Dance' (FGD), a model that deciphers meaning from dance movements.

Dr Maiorani believes the FGD – which is informed by linguistics and semiotics (the study of sign-based communication) theories – can help create visualisations of ‘projections’ happening during dance performances to help people understand what the dance means.

“Projections are like speech bubbles made by movement”, explains Dr Maiorani, “They are used by dancers to convey messages and involve extending body parts towards significant areas within the performance space.

“For example, a dancer is moving towards a lake, painted on the backdrop of a stage. They extend an arm forward towards the lake and a leg backwards towards a stage prop representing a shed. The extended arm means they are going to lake, while the leg means they are coming from shed.

“Using the Functional Grammar of Dance, we can annotate dances –filling the projection speech bubbles with meaning that people can understand without having background knowledge of dance.”

Dr Maiorani and a team of computer science and technology experts – including Loughborough’s Professor Massimiliano Zecca, Dr Russell Lock, and Dr Chun Liu – have been creating CGI videos of English National Ballet dancers to use with the FGD.

This involved getting dancers - including First Soloist Junor Souza and First Artist Rebecca Blenkinsop – to perform individual movements and phrases while wearing sensors on their head, torso, and limbs.

Two ballerinas dancing with sensors on their limbs and heads

First Soloist Junor Souza and First Artist Rebecca Blenkinsop dancing in the sensor suits.

Using the FGD, they decoded the conveyed meanings behind different movements and annotated the CGI videos accordingly.

The researchers are now investigating how these videos can facilitate engagement for audiences with varying levels of dance familiarity, aiming to eventually transform this research into software for the general public.

Of the ultimate goal for the research, Dr Maiorani said: “We hope that our work will improve our understanding of how we all communicate with our body movement, and that this will bring more people closer to the art of ballet.”

The Loughborough team worked with experts from the University of Bremen including Professor John Bateman and Ms Dayana Markhabayeva, and experts from English National Ballet. The research was funded by the AHRC-DFG and supported by the LU Institute of Advanced Studies.

They are also looking at how the FDG can be used in performance and circus studies, as well as analysing character movements within video games to determine any gender biases.

Further information can be found on the dedicated project website.

Notes for editors

Press release reference number: 23/195

Loughborough is one of the country’s leading universities, with an international reputation for research that matters, excellence in teaching, strong links with industry, and unrivalled achievement in sport and its underpinning academic disciplines.

It has been awarded five stars in the independent QS Stars university rating scheme, named the best university in the world for sports-related subjects in the 2022 QS World University Rankings – the sixth year running – and University of the Year for Sport by The Times and Sunday Times University Guide 2022.

Loughborough is ranked 7th in The UK Complete University Guide 2023, 10th in the Guardian University League Table 2023 and 11th in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023.

Loughborough is consistently ranked in the top twenty of UK universities in the Times Higher Education’s ‘table of tables’, and in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 over 90% of its research was rated as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally-excellent’. In recognition of its contribution to the sector, Loughborough has been awarded seven Queen's Anniversary Prizes.
The Loughborough University London campus is based on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and offers postgraduate and executive-level education, as well as research and enterprise opportunities. It is home to influential thought leaders, pioneering researchers and creative innovators who provide students with the highest quality of teaching and the very latest in modern thinking.

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