The Science of Artistry

Taylor Eddleston stands in the middle of a black rubber floor, surrounded by snow white walls and a low hanging ceiling. Bright fluorescent light floods the room. 

Despite the sterile setting, the University of Idaho third-year dance student rolls through a short routine, undeterred by the unnatural setting she find herself in.

For a brief moment, Eddleston stands motionless in her high-waisted black tights and purple leotard, her hair slicked back in a ballerina bun. She points her toes outward and bends at the knees.

Suddenly, she launches herself into the air. Her extremities are covered head-to-toe in small reflective orbs capturing her every movement.

As Eddleston moves, a 3D motion capture system with infrared cameras surrounds the eight-by-six-foot space, helping to catch the motions and creating a skeletal model of her body.

“What we do is basically make a representation of the individual without their body,” said Joshua Bailey, an assistant professor in the UI Department of Movement Sciences and coordinator of the Integrated Sports Medicine Movement Analysis Laboratory.

At first glance, it looks like sci-fi technology integrated into dance.

“It is like video games, where they have humans turned into characters,” said Abigail Shepard, a  UI fourth-year student. “This information can do so much for us, so we can see how we are moving.”

With students taking classes that range from biomechanics to dance labs, science and technology blend seamlessly into the dance program.

Shepard came to the university knowing she wanted to dance in some capacity. Initially, she planned to one day enter the pharmaceutical industry before switching course and becoming a full-time dance student — a major she once believed was more artistic than scientific.

“I didn’t expect what I was getting myself into, but I love it,” Shepard said. “I feel like I’ve been pushed to my absolute best.”

Science-based dance research is relatively new, said Ann Brown, an assistant professor in the UI Department of Movement Sciences and director of the Human Performance Laboratory.

“The area of dance science is pretty new. I would say only within the past 10 to 15 years dance science has kind of cropped up in the United States,” Brown said.

Due to the limited amount of research in the field, Shepard has taken it upon herself to participate in any and all experiments conducted in the department — not solely for her own benefit, but for those who come after her.

“(It) has really driven me to participate as much as I can in all of this because I want there to be research for those that come in in the future,” she said.

Bailey and his team collect a dancer’s data throughout their time at UI, allowing them to better examine their past and present movements.

“It is my goal, my team’s goal, our goal to make them feel as comfortable as possible,” Bailey said. “Nothing we are trying to do is judging or putting them in a hierarchical standing in the program. It is just trying to provide more information to improve their program and improve their dancing.”

Since performances can often be hard to judge or score, it is an important component working to bridge a crucial gap in the dance world, Brown said.

“If you were to compare a similar type of sport like gymnastics — gymnastics is easier because there are certain qualities that are judged to give a certain score,” Brown said. “But with dance, there is no valid or accepted way to score dance.”

The dancers’ skeletal models generated by the sensors give Brown a starting point to establish a valid method for judging dance.

“It is really challenging to take the creative part of dance and look at it in a really scientific way,” Brown said.

Expanding the science

The scientific side to dance is not just limited to  skeletal models and sensor technology. The program prides itself for teaching dancers about body composition and nutrition, as well as how each impacts the individual’s performance.

Body composition, Brown said, is not about looking at a person’s weight, but more specifically what the dancer’s body is made of.

“Most people focus too much on body weight. A better indicator of overall health is body composition and what we are made up of, not just overall body weight,” Brown said.

Inside the Physical Education Building’s Human Performance Lab located is a DEXA — dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry — machine. Dancers lay flat on the table as the machine slowly scans their body, calculating the body’s composition: bone density, muscle and fat mass.

Brown and the dancers can all see the exact science of the dancers’ bodies, making it easier and more effective to talk about diet and nutrition. However, simply preaching healthy eating habits to college students can be a battle in itself.

“It is unrealistic to think that college students are going to go to the (Moscow Food) Co-op and buy these fresh vegetables and cook these glorious meals,” Brown said. “That is not going to happen. We talk about how to make the better choices.”

Even with the program’s focus on healthy eating, maintaining a lean and thin body is sill a stigma that can loom over dancers, especially for those with a background in ballet.

“In most cases, it is telling them they need to be eating more,” Brown said. “It is not less. The emphasis is not to be eating less, to be getting skinnier — the emphasis is to maintain muscle mass.”

Shepard, who has been dancing for nine years, felt the weight of this stigma even before she began dancing at UI.

“It has definitely been a struggle coming to terms with the fact it is not about how I compare, it’s about how I perform in myself,” Shepard said. “Each year, I get a little better at just accepting we are not all the same, that every body is different — every body will move differently.”

‘We are athletes’

Long after most students leave campus, the Physical Education Building remains teeming with dancers. From academic courses to studio and then rehearsal, dance students spend much of their time in the old brick building.

Each day is spent working toward their seasonal end goal of Dancers, Drummers, Dreamers —a yearly performance in the spring showcasing a variety of talents.

Despite the hours spent training, rehearsing and performing, UI fifth-year student Saban Ursua said dance is a sport consistently overlooked.

“There are times we just don’t get enough recognition,” Ursua said. “We are athletes. We are in the studio basically 24/7 working to the bone, not only as artists but as athletes.”

When the dancers are on stage, the movements look effortless — their main goal. Belle Baggs, an associate professor in the Department of Movement Sciences, said this may be part of the reason why it could be easier to discount them as athletes.

“Say you watch some ballet dancer, and they do an incredible leap across the floor. You see it as effortless,” Baggs said. “When you see it, you are wowed by it, but you see it as effortless. It is effortless because they are so efficient at their training, because they understand their bodies so well.”

While people might believe greater effort is exerted in sports considered more mainstream — such as basketball or football — Ursua said the disparity between these sports and dance doesn’t exist.

“They’re on the field entertaining the masses, (and) so are we,” Ursua said. “We are on stage moving, entertaining the masses, doing all these flips and tricks and spins. How is that any different in effort than what they are doing on the field?”

Regardless of long days filled with dance classes and rehearsals, Ursua said the opportunity to move makes it all worth it — even with the skepticism some may have toward dancers’ legitimacy as athletes.

“I really love to move,” Ursua said. “In the dance program, moving any way that you want to is definitely encouraged. We want you to move.”

Story by Meredith Spelbring

Photos by Leslie Kiebert

Design by Lindsay Trombly and Alex Brizee