Cyber Stepping Students Get Lessons In Computer-Generated Dance

It was supposed to be the interface of computer animation and dance. What came out was a kind of spastic semaphore.

That didn’t discourage Felice Lesser, a New York City choreographer and Dalton Elementary artist-in-residence. She’s spending two weeks teaching two groups of fourth-graders about dance.

First came the computers, and a software program called Life Forms, a gift to her from its inventor, Thomas Calvert of Simon Fraser University. The students could click and drag a virtual dancer into bizarre contortions, then print out a page of poses.

“Make them really, really easy ones,” Dominic Voz told teammates Jessica Kay and Holly Blanchette Monday morning, “because we’re going to have to dance them.” He could see that the computer model was more limber than most of his classmates.

Some students stood by the computer, striking a classic ballet pose for teammates to follow. Others gleefully bent the stick figure double, finding out later that the poses were impossible to perform.

The program could also animate the movements like a cartoon, and set them to music.

When she’s not on the road, Lesser directs her own New York dance company, Dance 2000. When asked, she visits schools around the nation. Last week, she was in New Canaan, Conn.

Along with the fourth-grade project, she’s giving dance lessons to all the classes at Dalton, giving them a taste of ballet, modern and jazz styles.

As the students rehearsed their dances in small groups Monday, Lesser found out it’s not easy to get kids to appreciate dance.

Ten-year-old Voz refused to join the rehearsals. “It’s too tiring and too complicated,” he said, watching his teammates work up their act. He admitted it’s embarrassing to dance in front of the other students. Lesser has seen it before.

“Even if they don’t do anything else in dance, at least when they see it, they’ll relate to it,” said Lesser.