VRAS: A virtual rehearsal assistant system for live performance

The VR technologies are widely adopted for training purposes by providing the users with educational virtual experience. In this work, we propose an immersive VR system that help the choreographers and the dancers to facilitate their dance rehearsal experience. The system integrates motion capture devices and head-mounted displays (HMDs). The motions of the dancers, their partners, and the choreographers are captured and projected into a virtual dancing scene in an interactive frame rate. The dancers who are wearing the HMDs, are allowed to observe the synthesized virtual performances within a virtual stage space from several selected third-person views. These are the audience’s view, the dancing partner’s view, and the choreographer’s view. Such synthesized external self-images augment dancer’s perception of their dance performance and their understanding of the choreography. Feedbacks from the participants indicate the proposed system is effective and the preliminary experimental results agree with our observations.