(Dance, Technology, AI and Ethics)
Embodied Cultural Translation is a framework I developed to examine how embodied cultural knowledge—especially African diasporic movement—is translated into technological ecosystems and the ethical responsibilities that govern that translation.
Rather than approaching “dance + technology” as novelty or enhancement, this work frames dance as a site of power and technology as an even more powerful tool—one that can either flatten movement or honor it. The focus remains on the notion that dance is data; protecting meaning, authorship, and dignity when embodied practices enter digital systems is paramount.
My approach combines choreographic practice, cultural anthropology, pedagogy, and design research where I have developed ethical methods and protocols for translating movement into technological ecosystems within my framework:
High-Level Definitions
- Technosomatics — I define this as a creative process framework for creating a multimodal experience in my work.
- Annotated Embodiment — a principle asserting that movement must be situated, relational, and culturally meaningful in translation.
- Embodied Annotation — a grounded protocol I created to use for AI and Machine Learning.
- Ethno-Somatic User Experience Design — a design framework I have created that integrates embodied knowledge as part of the design process.
My approach, developed from my training as a professional dancer, cultural anthropologist, dance ethnographer and educator informs my creative process, research and archival documentation and implementation. As a domain expert in dance and movement analysis for AI and Machine Learning for computer vision, my methodology was the basis for my contribution to METAs Ego-Exo4D project (2023) and research publication (2024).
Impact
This 4th research pillar of mine contributes a rigorously ethical model for technology by demonstrating that:
- Ethical AI begins at the level of design, not only deployment.
- Frameworks such as mine can facilitate more accuracy and fairness in movement analysis systems.
- Dance offers critical insight into intelligence, relationality, and meaning that technological systems often fail to capture.
By positioning dance as a form of embodied intelligence rather than abstract motion data, this work advances responsible AI design, culturally grounded pedagogy, and ethical digital representation.
Selected Works / Case Studies
- (2025 – Current) The House Remembers – Choreographic works developed in Technosomatics
- (2023 – 2025) Ego-Exo4D (Meta FAIR – Foundational Artificial Intelligence Research Team)
- (2005 – 2010) Digital Archival Projects x Yauri (Katherine Dunham + The Library of Congress, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre/Alvin Ailey American Dance Foundation, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company)
Related Language System Tools
- Technosomatics
- Annotated Embodiment
- Embodied Annotation
- Ethno-Somatic User Experience Design
