From Performers to Creators: Understanding Retired Women's Perceptions of Technology-Enhanced Dance Performance

Paper Title

From Performers to Creators: Understanding Retired Women's Perceptions of Technology-Enhanced Dance Performance

Publication Info

• Topic area: Age-sensitive interactive technologies for artistic expression in retired women’s community dance.
• Keywords: Interactive dance, retired women, AI-generated content, co-creation, stage performance, LLMs, motion-aligned effects, aging and creativity, participatory design, community dance.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Retired women dancers face significant challenges in enhancing stage performances due to limited access to professional stage design, age-related physical and cognitive decline, and a persistent digital divide. Existing interactive dance technologies are inaccessible to non-professionals, particularly older adults.
• Significance: Addressing these challenges can empower retired women to transition from passive performers to active co-creators, fostering creative agency and enhancing the quality of community-based performances.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research highlights the benefits of interactive dance technologies and AI-generated content (AIGC) in professional contexts but overlooks their adaptation for older, non-professional users. This paper builds on these insights to explore age-sensitive design strategies that bridge the gap between creative ambition and technical accessibility.

Solution

• Proposed approach: StageTailor, a co-creative system integrating LLM-powered scene description, AI-generated video synthesis, and motion-aligned visual effects, designed to empower retired women dancers in creating personalized stage backdrops.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduction of age-sensitive creative AI mediation as a framework for empowering older adults in artistic domains.
  2. Development of a two-step workflow combining LLM-based textual input and motion-responsive visual integration.
  3. Empirical insights into the creative aspirations and constraints of retired women dancers.
  4. Design implications for accessible, participatory AIGC systems tailored to aging populations.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  1. Workshop I: Explored retired women’s challenges and aspirations through questionnaires, interviews, and hands-on interactive dance probes.
  2. Workshop II: Evaluated StageTailor’s usability and creative impact with 16 participants, using a two-step workflow for scene creation and motion-aligned effects.
  3. StageTailor’s workflow: (i) Keyword-based scene description expanded by LLMs and synthesized into videos, (ii) Motion capture and integration of interactive effects aligned with choreography.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Participants iteratively refined their creative inputs, averaging 2.81 iterations for scene descriptions and 3.25 iterations for video outputs.
  • Satisfaction ratings: 4.07/5 overall, 3.88/5 for keyword-based input, 3.33/5 for AI-generated videos, and 4.0/5 for interactive visual effects.
  • Participants reported enhanced creative agency and a shift from passive users to active co-creators.
• Advantage over baselines: StageTailor enabled participants to generate personalized, dynamic stage visuals, overcoming limitations of static, generic backdrops and reducing reliance on external resources.
• Experiments / evaluation: Conducted two workshops with 31 participants (15 in Workshop I, 16 in Workshop II). Data collection included questionnaires, interviews, observational notes, and thematic analysis. Metrics included usability, satisfaction, and creative empowerment.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited generalizability due to the focus on a single community in China.
  • Short-term evaluation without real-world performance testing.
  • Economic costs of AIGC tools not addressed.
  • Future research should explore collaborative design, enhanced intent-output alignment, and long-term impact.

Summary

This paper introduces StageTailor, a co-creative system designed to empower retired women dancers by integrating LLM-powered scene description, AI-generated videos, and motion-aligned visual effects. Through two workshops with 31 participants, the study demonstrates that age-sensitive adaptations lower technical barriers and foster creative agency, enabling participants to transition from passive performers to active co-creators. Findings highlight the potential of accessible AIGC systems to redefine older adults’ roles in artistic domains, with implications for designing inclusive, participatory technologies. Future work should address long-term usability, collaborative features, and cost-effectiveness.