IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2018 - 16

performance automatically based on their movements by
motion-capture technologies. It also proposes a novel
approach for dance movement data analysis and evaluating
learners' performance qualitatively and quantitatively using
the dance movements database.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HAND-WAVING DANCE
The hand-waving dance is an important spiritual wealth created
by the Tujia people. For thousands of years, it has been regarded
as the epitome of social development and classic art in the long
history of Tujia. The hand-waving dance is a carrier of Tujia
folk culture, and it has important value for its irreplaceable role
in Tujia cultural development. Unfortunately, the Tujia handwaving dance is in danger of dying out and should be protected.
A great deal of work has been done to protect the dance.
This work can be divided into the following six aspects: 1)
establishing the protection mechanism, 2) developing an
overall plan on a national level, 3) strengthening protection
by placing an emphasis on fostering traditional cultural inheritors [1], 4) increasing coverage of the Tujia hand-waving
dance by the media, 5) combining hand-waving dance culture
with people's lives, and 6) creating a distinctive culture brand
for the dance. However, these ways are too vague to guarantee a practical effect. In these protection methods, the Tujia
hand-waving dance is usually recorded via two-dimensional
methods, including text, pictures, audio, and video. Although
these traditional approaches are convenient, with their use,
dance movement cannot be recorded in detail for further
analysis. In addition, these methods generally ignore the role
of the people who act as the most effective carriers of traditional culture transmission. To develop the hand-waving
dance, we need to popularize the dance with more people to
help them know more about the dance and use it as a form of
entertainment [2].
Against this backdrop, we take advantage of the Kinect,
which is a low-cost depth-sensing camera technology that
enables users to communicate with a computer in a natural
way, such as with actions, gestures, language, with completely

hands-free control [3]. This motion sensor technology has
received widespread attention and has been widely used in
dance composition and training as well as dance evaluation [4].
Kar et al. provided a new perspective to dance composition with
a computer using Kinect to find out visually appealing dance
sequences [5]. Similarly, Kyan et al. used a Kinect camera system to capture human movement data for ballet dance training
[6], and Alexiadis et al. evaluated a dancer's performance using
skeleton tracking based on Kinect [7]. These applications demonstrate that the Kinect holds the potential for dance movement
recording and evaluation. Although a great deal of attention is
currently focused on the Kinect and its application in dance,
much less attention is paid to applying this technology to the
digital protection of traditional dance. It is necessary and feasible to combine traditional culture protection with modern science and technology. This method can provide a novel way to
protect and inherit traditional motor skills culture.
Based on this goal, we developed the game-based learning
platform PAC with the help of the Kinect. It can be used to
recognize and record Tujia hand-waving dance movement in
a 3-D digital format with features of the dance. PAC provides
a novel and scientific method to protect the hand-waving
dance digitally. Given the significance of future research on
minority dance culture protection, PAC effectively provides a
novel method for more general human motion analysis.

RELATED RESEARCH
In this section, we review related studies of dance learning
and game-based learning in detail.

DANCE MOVEMENT LEARNING
Watching and following movements of the choreographer are
regarded as fundamental and sound principles of dance learning [8]. They are the most common methods in motor skills
training and can be called the demonstration-performance
method. The concept diagram for learning dance movement is
shown in Figure 1. It tells us that demonstration and feedback
are the main functions of a choreographer. The demonstration

Demonstration
Dance Movements
Demonstration

Dance Movements
Training

Movements Database

Choreographer

Dance Movements
Analysis

Feedback

FIGURE 1. The concept diagram for learning the dance movements.
16 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

july 2018

Dance Movements
Evaluation

Learner

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2018