Behind The Scenes: SingStar Dance

In a studio in South London, professional dancers, choreographers, principal designers, members of the SingStar team and myself gathered for something pretty special.
This was the shoot for the upcoming SingStar Dance game, due for release later this year. The team were recording footage of the dancers that will be presented in-game for users to follow when playing.
Fully rehearsed and in costume, the dancers were ready to begin.

For me, watching anyone perform a well thought out dance routine is pretty impressive, and two people simultaneously performing a very long and difficult routine in perfect time is something that takes a lot of effort, practice and skill.

I spoke to choreographer Shaun Niles about how he creates a dance routine for SingStar Dance.
“It’s very hard! I have to pretend to hold the PlayStation Move motion controller myself when I work out routines to see what can be done with it. Some movements can be quite difficult, such as a flick of the wrist, and can feel a bit weird with the controller in your hand at first. Its hard work but I have choreographed a few routines for SingStar Dance now; it just takes a lot of practice!”

As the day went on, it was very clear that the dances had been carefully tailored to the song in question.
Principal designer Charlie Hasdell told me how the team decided on dance moves and routines.
“I go to all the dance rehearsals, record the performance and then play it back next to the original video. I think there is an expectation from SingStar users that when they see a dance move in a video, they want to recreate that themselves, so we try to keep it all as relevant as possible.”

Once all the dances have been perfected and recorded, they will be synced alongside the original video, then given the SingStar game treatment so they look lovely and colourful. The final step sees the dance transcribers go through each track and mark up the dance routines so you can bust some moves!
Watching the dancers, all I could think was “wow, I wish I could do that”. Thankfully, when I get my hands on a copy of the game, I’ll be able to. I hope.