JOIN USCovid-19 survivor in Bengaluru dances in Venice as VR hologram
Covid-19 has been a showstopper, but for a Covid-survivor-cum-dancer who has been presented with an opportunity to perform at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, the show must go on by whatever means possible.
Infected by Covid-19 while returning to India during the early stage of the epidemic, on March 9, dancer and choreographer Diya Naidu, 36, (also known as Patient 23) is now a little leery of travelling. This, coupled with International travel controls due to the pandemic, meant that actually going to Venice is out of the question, she told DH.
The show in Venice called for five dancers from across the world (Diya in Bengaluru, one in Melbourne and three in Geneva) to perform onstage during a futuristic “VR Expanded” section of the festival.
The performances could not merely be filmed and streamed via the internet. “All five dancers need to be in the same digital space, performing in unison,” Diya added.
“This had to be done using the latest advances in Virtual Reality tech,” explained Sujay H G, the chief technology officer of a Bengaluru-based startup, Viga Entertainment, which will record the realistic movements of the dancer in real-time through the use of a special 21 sensor-laden bodysuit.
The method
This movement data, coupled with real-time movement information of the dancer in Melbourne, will be sent to Geneva, where under the direction of choreographer Gilles Jobin, the movements will be transposed onto CGI human models, Sujay said.
Once the movements are applied to the CGI models, the sequence is live-streamed to the Venice audience. “All of this is done with a delay of one to two seconds,” Sujay said. The multinational team had its performance on Wednesday and is to perform every day until the festival’s end on September 12.