November 14, 2006

Savion Glover Off To Penguin School

For the animated film, "Happy Feet," opening in theaters this Friday, tap dancer Savion Glover attended penguin school.

Glover, as reported in LA Times, was working on mastering the constraints of penguin locomotion so that he could perform the tap dance moves of Mumble, the penguin with no vocal range but great dance moves. The problem for Mumble is that among the Emperor penguins of the Antarctic, if you can't sing you'll have no social standing in the community.

Then, once he had the Penguin motions down, Glover's tap dance routine was captured via motion capture, "...a recording process that required him to tap dance on a small stage under 60 lights in a black bodysuit that had 40 reflective sensors near his joints. As Glover performed, the light from his reflectors was recorded by an array of 60 cameras and turned into data." The next part of process consisted of converting these captured motions in to the animated moves of Mumble. (On the LA Times article, you can watch a video clip of this motion capture process. Or, if you can't access this article, you can see same clip on Yahoo.)

More links:

- "Happy Feet" profile on Internet Movie Database.

- Article in USA Today, "Penguins on tap could ice the mice."

- MySpace Page - they even have news ticker and countdown clock that you can add to your blog/website.

I started writing this post because of Savion Glover and tap dancing. But it's also interesting to see how this movie is being promoted online. A lot of food for thought for dancers and dance companies - I'll write more about this topic.

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