Description
What happens when machines teach humans to bop? Dance video games turn out to be players’ experiences of popular music, invite experimentation with gendered and racialized movement styles, and present new chances for teaching, studying, and archiving choreography. Drawing on five years of analysis with players, game designers, and choreographers for the Just Dance and Dance Central games, Playable Bodies situates dance games in a media ecology that incorporates the bigger game industry, viral music videos, reality TV competitions, marketing campaigns, and emerging surveillance technologies. Writer Kiri Miller tracks the circulation of dance gameplay and related body projects across media platforms to expose how dance games serve as as intimate media, configuring new relationships among humans, interfaces, music and dance repertoires, and social media practices.