Assessing the Learning of Folk Dance Movements Using Immersive Virtual Reality

Digital technologies can help with preservation of cultural heritage and virtual reality can be used for that purpose. In this paper, a virtual reality application that has the potential of assisting the learning process of folk dances is introduced. This application includes three different assisting approaches that are presented and evaluated with 30 healthy participants. An animated avatar of the professional dancer is shown in immersive virtual reality and participants were asked to imitate the movements in order to learn the dance. Movements were recorded using a passive optical motion capture system and afterwards compared to the recordings from the professional dancers. Questionnaire data were also collected and initial results indicate that participants that had feedback provided achieved better performance.