Requirements Analysis and Preliminary Development of SwingBeats: A Real-Time Haptic Beat Tracking System for Dance Education

Dancing is one of the most fundamental forms of human expression which is almost always coupled with music. Each of the thousand plus dance styles in existence across the globe come with their own movements and patterns; yet they all depend on synchronization with music beats. Dance moves are choreographed for certain moves to occur on certain beats of the music with a certain tempo. A challenge of learning any dance style is keeping track of the music beats. SwingBeats is a real time, haptic feedback system under research an development that helps dancers stay on beat with the music. As a supplemental training tool for new dancers who have no formal background in music or dance it enables the learner to dance to any music even if they have never heard that music before and thus broadens the spectrum of music one can dance to. SwingBeats teaches learners to move their bodies to the beat of the music and thus intuitively develop a sense of beat and rhythm. In doing so, it helps learners become better dancers more quickly.