Quantification and recognition of basic motion okuri in Japanese traditional dance

This work investigates a method for quantifying and recognizing two basic motions, feminine and description, of okuri in Japanese traditional dance. Index variables for quantifying typical form of dance motions are defined and measured on dancing played by a distinguished expert, with results indicating the effectiveness for discrimination of motion types. The indices are effective also for discriminating the movements of two dancers who played dancing with a common scenario different from the model dancing by the expert. Although the effectiveness is dependent on various factors such as the quality of motion samples, the subspaces and distance measures used in the multivariate analysis, the individuality of dancers and uniqueness of dance motions are well recognized using these indices in an experiment.