Suzie’s Dance: Reliving Dance through Motion Capture Animation of Photographs

‘Suzie's Dance' is a character driven documentary that explores the passions, life-force and sheer determination of a dancer  who, suddenly cut down by a debilitating physical condition that led her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, continues to follow her dreams, while guiding others to believe in, practice and develop their owns one. This paper will describe the development of a section of the documentary that attempts reconstruct the dancer’s childhood and youth while she was dancing without using a wheelchair and when discussing her childhood and youth. No video footage exists of her dancing at this time only photographs. We worked to bring these photographs alive as an animation story / dance piece. This was done by motion capturing a performance by an able bodied dancer and applying it to these photographs so as to make them move. This is an important aesthetical element to cover the lack of footage in her past, and also an evocation of how memories and time can be constructed and can have an extended reality.