Dance of the Pixel

Photos by Leah Nash

新澳资料 prof leaps into terpsichorean technology, iPad in hand.

By Romel Hernandez

KINETIC ENERGY. Prof. Hannah Kosstrin uses KineScribe to go over dance moves with Jackie Davis ’14.

Like a frolicsome sprite capering through an enchanted forest, the dancer stands on her toes, spins a pirouette, soars through the air with an impressive leap and—oh, wait a second.

A few taps on an iPad rewrite and rearrange an intricate sequence of shapes, symbols, and squiggles on screen, indicating how the dancer’s body should move through space and time. Turn right, not left. Point the arm like this. Make it three grands jetés.

Invented almost 100 years ago, Labanotation (also known as Laban movement notation) is a language for writing the choreographic equivalent of a musical score. Put the right symbols together, and you might have a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine or a dance piece by Martha Graham, a Scottish Highland fling or the electric slide.

Hannah Kosstrin, visiting assistant professor of dance, is bringing Labanotation into the digital age with a new iPad app named KineScribe.

“I just thought, ‘How cool would it be to bring the iPad into the dance studio?’” Prof. Kosstrin says. “Creating this app can make dance notation more accessible in a way that is engaging and user-friendly.”

Funding for the initial work on KineScribe was provided by 新澳资料’s iPad program for faculty, which supports professors who want to bring new technology into the classroom, furthered by additional support from Marty Ringle, 新澳资料’s chief information officer, and buttressed by a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. After last-minute testing and tweaking over the fall, KineScribe is now available to dancers everywhere—at no cost—through the App Store.

With so many students bringing tablets and laptops to the classroom, more professors are discovering creative ways to use the technology to engage and enhance student learning, says Trina Marmarelli, 新澳资料’s director of instructional technology services. Some professors are happy to stick with blackboards and chalk, but the college also wants to support faculty willing to experiment with new approaches. The KineScribe project is a sterling example of how professors can integrate technology into their teaching.

“[KineScribe] has such immediacy—there’s almost a sensory connection with the app,” Marmarelli says. “An iPad is so portable, the user can be there right alongside the dancer or the choreographer during a rehearsal or performance.”

Kosstrin started dance classes at age four and continued through high school, studying a variety of dance forms and composition at local dance studios and a summer arts program in the Boston area. She attended Goucher College in Maryland, planning to become a dance teacher. Inspired by an overseas program to study dance in London, she shifted her focus from dance education to history.

She went on to study dance at the Ohio State University, and also enjoyed time performing with and running a small dance organization between earning her MA and PhD degrees in dance history and dance studies. With her interests firmly entrenched in scholarship, Kosstrin had not performed on stage in years until last summer. As scholar in residence at the Bates Dance Festival, she performed in the annual faculty improvisational dance performa