Most people don’t know how to dance, and many are so self-conscious they won’t even sign up for a class because it means other people will witness the stumbling, bumbling, and awkward shuffling they call dancing and everyone else calls failing a sobriety test. But what if you didn’t have to learn in front of anyone? What if you could practice alone in virtual reality, guided by digital instructors teaching you to cha-cha or waltz without fear of judgment?
According to NPR, that’s exactly what a new generation of virtual reality apps is trying to do, which they got to test at the Augmented World Expo, a trade show where development teams from around the world get to show off the virtual and augmented reality experiences they’ve been working on.
This Virtual Dance Instructor Lets You Practice Without Anyone Judging You
One of them, Dance Guru, places the dance-challenged in a virtual dance studio, where a motion-captured instructor shows each step before coaching them through the routine. The app currently teaches salsa, bachata, waltz, and cha-cha in both lead and follow roles, providing users with real-time instruction.
It’s like Just Dance or Dance Dance Revolution, but it doesn’t throw you into the deep end by asking you to perform a full Britney Spears routine right off the bat; instead, it eases you into it the way a private instructor would.
Its creator, David Huang, was inspired after he got frustrated with the inconvenience of real-life dance lessons, which were costly and inconsistent. He figured, if you could somehow capture some of the magic of a physical, flesh-and-blood dance class in a virtual environment that you can dip in and out of in your spare time at home, maybe that can be an adequate enough lesson to get some of the moves down.
Of course, as you can imagine, some big limitations might hinder just how severely you can cut a rug on the dance floor. The virtual experience lacks the nuances, the little physical signatures, that make a dance partner unique and require you to adjust in real time.
Dance is self-expression, and when you’re partnered with someone else, your moves together create the art, create the emotion. You can learn the steps in virtual reality, but until you get out into the world and find your dance partner, you may never truly be great.
You need the weight and emotion provided by another person if you really want to know how to dance. Unless you’re going to be breakdancing, in which case I think the VR headset will fly off your head and explode on impact with the nearest wall.