Playable Bodies Dance Games and Intimate Media

What happens when machines teach humans to dance? Dance video games transform players' experiences of popular music, invite experimentation with gendered and racialized movement styles, and present new possibilities for teaching, learning, and archiving choreography. Drawing on five years of research with players, game designers, and choreographers for the Just Dance and Dance Central games, Playable Bodies situates dance games in a media ecology that includes the larger game industry, viral music videos, reality TV competitions, marketing campaigns, and emerging surveillance technologies. Author Kiri Miller tracks the circulation of dance gameplay and related body projects across media platforms to reveal how dance games function as intimate media, configuring new relationships among humans, interfaces, music and dance repertoires, and social media practices.

Kiri Miller is an Associate Professor of Music at Brown University. Her research stands at the intersection of media studies, performance studies, and ethnomusicology. She is the author of Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance and Traveling Home: Sacred Harp Singing and American Pluralism. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the American Council of Learned Societies.