18 Mar Wild And Free – Dance like No One Is Watching
What’s your signature dance move? Are you more a hip-swinging kinda gal or all in, arms flinging ‘n twirling? Or perhaps you’re more of a head bopper? Whatever it is, once your all-time favourite tunes come on, there is no stopping you now. Dance like no one is watching! Even if you’re all by yourself, dancing through your kitchen. #youdoyou
Dancing can be liberating for both mind and body. We know you feel that already. BUT, did you know that your signature dance move is as unique as your fingerprint. Say what? True story.
We give you the scoop.
There is a new study published in the Journal of New Music, that proves that your dance moves are unique, potentially as distinct as your fingerprints. Your signature moves are, quite literally, yours only. Not hard to believe in some people’s case – we get that – but sounds cool for you, no? There have been previous studies that show the way you dance can determine how extroverted or neurotic you are, your mood and even how much you amplify what’s inside. But this one is the first of its kind. They unintentionally discovered that your dance moves are your very own — so much so that a computer can identify you with no information except for how you rock it on the dance floor. #OMG
You may wonder how that came about? Well, here’s the lowdown. The research team initially wanted to see whether a computer could detect the music genre by people’s dance moves. The only instruction the 73 dancers received was to move, however they felt was natural, to whichever genre of music played. It turns out that the computer couldn’t identify the correct music genre. It could, however, correctly identify which of the 73 participants were dancing. The computer guessed each dancer correctly 94% of the time. Fascinating.
Your signature dance moves
Apparently, we dance to the beat of our own drum. Pasi Saari, Ph.D., co-author of this study, says that it seems as though each person’s dance moves are a kind of fingerprint. Each dancer’s unique signature movement stays the same, no matter what type of music is playing.
You may think that you have similar dance moves to a friend or maybe you’re trying to imitate your fave singer. And that may be true. But FULL truth be told, you bring little nuances to your own groove that help the computer pick you out from a crowd.
Despite these findings, the bets were off when it comes to a mosh-pit. #nosurprisethere. Researchers note that the computer had a more difficult time trying to identify the participants when they were dancing to a musical genre that inspires similar moves. Cue: heavy metal with its notorious head-banging gesture.
“It’s probable that metal caused more dancers to move in similar ways, making it harder to tell them apart,” the first author of the study Emily Carlson, Ph.D., says in a news release.
What’s next?
We are, of course, curious about what this might mean for the future capabilities of computer-recognition software. Now researchers want to get their geek on about the social and cultural implications of these findings.
Let’s not jump ahead too fast, though, as researchers still need to find out so much more. Questions of the day now include whether our movement signatures stay the same across our lifespan, or whether we can detect differences between cultures based on these movement signatures. And how well we, as humans, can recognise individuals from their dance movements compared to computers.
So, it looks like we can expect more studies where participants try to guess someone’s identity, with nothing but their dancing as a clue. Who is volunteering for this one? We think it’s time to start perfecting your signature dance moves now!
However, if the idea of dancing makes you want the ground to swallow you whole instead, we have a sneaky little dance mobility flow for you. You can practice your moves and maybe even create your own. Remember, these are your unique ones – for real!
Let’s dance on your yoga mat.
It’s for all you yogis out there, that want to get a little contemporary and move it all out. Yes, it might feel funny at first, but you’ll be feeling a joyful buzz right after. Join Sol in his experimental dance mobility class. Put on your fancy tights and find an open space. Putting on your fave tunes makes it even more fun.
Hey, you might even discover your very own yoga-dance-asana moves!
Let’s dance, yogis!
Original article published by MindBodyGreen
