Cyberdance has just been published and I want to share a few thoughts about its concept and the reasons that made me started this several year’s journey.

First of all “dance & Interactivity”: I felt a personal need to find a meeting point between these two art languages, the motives are a few, let me explain them.

I come from different professional experiences in the field of multimedia, one of the most interesting one was when I worked for Studio Azzurro (https://www.studioazzurro.com/), where interactive multimedia installations achieved a peculiar synthesis in various works (such as “La Pozzanghera” interactive installation, “Galileo” interactive dance show as well as immersive museum projects like “Transatlantici” and “Quotidiano sostenibile”).

These experienses made me crave for a interactive product which could link freedom of creation and dance with the aid of interaction, in order to achieve this goal the video game medium seemed the perfect choice.

Another point is my love for dance which always animated my need to try different styles like tango, club dancing, dance hall, concerts, and night events in the Milan’s underground circuit: I saw a game about dance like a mean to let other know about the joys of dancing and a way to encourage others to try and experiment with movement combined with music.

I also had a long story of teaching “video game development” at Civica Scuola di Cinema Milan’s School of cinema: there I had the possibility to follow the students’ path to learn about designing and creating video games, starting from simple ideas all the way to the final release of fully playable and very original gaming experiences. With Cyberdance I have once more followed that route, this time with a small team of friends, chasing the idea of a video game far away from the “classic” genres.

The final reason that has convinced me to pursue this long development journey, was the lack of a “free movement dance” video game where it would be possible to create one’s own choreography starting from basic steps, without the well known mechanics of “rhythm games”.

I hope this labour will be able to arouse curiosity in the gaming community about a product which is still pretty rough around the edges but seems original to me and, I believe, to has a lot of creative potential.

Good dancing to every gamer who will choose to try Cyberdance out :)