About the Project ● Odissi ● Odissi and Motion-Capture Technology ● Composing the Odissi Body ● Analysis

Analysis

In an embodied performance setting, the dancer employs multiple design channels (New London Group, 2000, p. 26) for communicating with an audience: gestural (dance movements, facial expressions); spatial (interaction with the dance space); visual (costume, makeup, props and setting); audio (music, footsteps); and linguistic (associated narratives, song lyrics, programs, etc.). With mocap technology, however, the dancer has the agency to focus the audience's attention on particular communicative channels—in this case, gestural—by decreasing the salience (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 212) of information from other channels to varying degrees.

Our analysis (viewable by clicking the button above each focal video) investigates each representation's affordances and constraints for writing the Odissi body in digital space. We include for comparison a thumbnail of an embodied studio performance of the dance, complete with sound and the smack of the dancer's feet striking the earth. All interior videos play automatically upon loading but may be paused or restarted with a click. These videos are for comparative reference and do not line up perfectly—emphasizing the fact that even the motion-capture data animating these videos is not "the dance" in its most essential form, but rather one more unique performance on a different (digital) stage.