Hi Harrison,
Interesting ideas!
I have found that videos of actual dancers have been suuuuuuper helpful in figuring out
how a dance works. There's a lot of subtle things that become evident when watching
videos that wouldn't show up in simulations (e.g., where timing is sight, where people
need additional prompting etc). Callers Box is AMAZING for this as they link to videos of
the dance. My suggestion would be to watch the dance in multiple contexts.
Emily
On Wed, Jun 28, 2023 at 10:34 PM Harrison Keely via Contra Callers
<contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Hi, everyone! As a new caller, I’m looking for
apps that will help me visualize, practice, and plan contra dances.
The pipe dream is an Oculus/Vision Pro VR app allowing callers to practice calling while
virtual dancers follow instructions. VR developers - let's talk!
More realistically, it would be amazing to have something similar to the Taminations app
(
https://www.tamtwirlers.org/taminations/), but for contra dances instead of squares. The
idea is that you could input a sequence of moves and watch the 2D figures perform them.
http://dancekaleidoscope.org.au/dance.html is the closest option I’ve found to this, but
it offers only specific full dances and doesn’t let you input individual figures to see
them combined. There’s a note on the bottom of that page which says you can download an
HTML/Javascript program to animate your own dances, but it seems overly complex to set up
(I can’t figure it out on my Mac), and unfriendly for mobile devices.
One last thing – I’m hunting for an iOS app that’s a database of dances. Like “The
Caller’s Box” (
https://www.ibiblio.org/contradance/thecallersbox/) but for iPhone-sized
screens and with offline support.
Perhaps some of these things don’t yet exist, but I think they would go a long way toward
helping new callers. Maybe there are some callers or contra-lovers out there who double as
software developers or know someone with skills who could help us and we can create new
applications together to boost the next generation of callers.
Any feedback, ideas, or help would be great!
Thank you,
Harrison
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