Virtual Dance Museum: the Case of Greek/Cypriot Folk Dancing

In this paper, we have designed and developed a virtual dance museum to provide the technological tools that allow for widely educating the public, most specifically the youngest generations, about the story, costumes, music, and history of our dances. The holistic documentation of our intangible cultural heritage creations is a critical necessity for the preservation and the continuity of our identity as Europeans. In that direction, we have employed a specially designed relational database schema that holistically structures the information within the database, and is ideal for archiving, presenting, further analyzing, and re-using dance motion data. Data have been retargeted to a virtual character, dressed with traditional uniform and simulated to achieve realism. The users can view and interact with the archived data using advanced 3D character visualization in three ways: via an online 3D virtual environment; in virtual reality using headset; and in augmented reality, where the 3D characters can co-inhabit the real world. Our museum is publicly accessible, and also enables motion data reusability, facilitating dance learning applications through gamification.