Whatever Dance Toolbox is a set of software tools designed for the analysis and development of dance and movement. Six tools included in the suite can help dancers and choreographers devise, develop and rehearse dance, but can also be used in dance education or by non-dancers to explore movement. The suite is a product of a long-standing collaboration between BADco. and German human-machine interface developer and artist Daniel Turing, and it reflects some of the mutual concerns with the dancer-computer interaction and choreographic thinking.
Using Whatever Dance Toolbox in rehearsal dancers can manipulate the image of movement and work with an ”active mirror” to produce qualities that they cannot produce on their own. Body is placed inside a different relation to its environment, which, in turn, determines and changes its expressiveness. Tools employ visual analysis, tasks and temporally manipulated reproduction of captured images to allow dancers and choreographers to study and complexify their movement and composition. The machine-factor generates an organization of choreographic elements different and alien to what other choreographic methodologies can produce.
Free download and easy setup
Whatever Dance Toolbox comes on a free Ubuntu GNU/Linux LiveCD that you can insert into your computer’s CD/DVD drive and boot into the operating system without having to install it on your computer’s hard drive. All you will need to start working on Whatever Dance Toolbox is a computer with a CD/DVD drive connected by a FireWire cable to a video camera and, preferably, a video projector or a large screen.
Whatever Dance Toolbox can be either downloaded or can be ordered on a CD with a manual written by BADco.
For the latest version of Whatever Dance Toolbox contact: badco@badco.hr
You will need to burn the downloaded file onto a blank CD as an image or create a bootable USB flash drive. You can use either the CD or USB flash drive to boot your computer into the Whatever Dance Toolbox environment.
Detailed introduction and instructions can be found in our Whatever Dance Toolbox – Manual. The electronic version of the Manual can be downloaded here.
Note that the electronic version of the Manual does not include methodological exercises that BADco. has developed and that you can use to develop your own work. As the tool is intuitive, you can develop your own exercises, but should you wish to benefit from our experience you can order the Manual as a book.
Order Whatever Dance Toolbox Manual
Based on the experience of using Whatever Dance Toolbox in our own work and facilitating numerous workshops with the tool, we have developed a set of exercises that can help you in your work. You can order the physical copy of Whatever Dance Toolbox Manual that includes our methodological exercises and a CD with the software suite, please write to badco@badco.hr
The price for the Manual is €30 for individuals and €60 for institutions (packaging and postage not included).
ISBN: 978-953-56603-0-9
Whatever Dance Toolbox – Workshops
If you are interested in organizing a Whatever Dance Toolbox workshop for your students, your dancers, your non-dancers, your scholars, your visual artists, your audiences, we have done a number of Whatever Dance Toolbox workshops tailored to different groups. Please write to us at badco@badco.hr
You can also check out the article by Lise Amy Hansen and Andrew Morrison mentioning Whatever Dance Toolbox: Materializing Movement—Designing for Movement-based Digital Interaction (International Journal of Design, Vol 8, No 1, 2014)