The San Francisco Dance Film Festival, UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice, and UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies present the Pop-up Mocap Lab powered by Qualisys, a three-day motion capture workshop led by Cie Gilles Jobin, a Swiss dance company working at the forefront of dance and motion capture.

Equipped with a high-end optical motion capture system by Qualisys, this workshop is designed for dancers, choreographers, technical artists, 3D artists and digital creators interested in real-time motion capture and digital performance, which opens up new ways to express movement, tell stories, and collaborate across disciplines. It bridges the physical and digital worlds, letting you create performances that go beyond the limits of live or filmed dance. Bringing together performers and technical artists, the workshop allows dancers to explore motion capture performance while technical artists gain a deeper understanding of the mocap pipeline for digital productions. By working together, both groups develop a shared understanding of movement in virtual environments and the technical workflows behind digital performance.

Led by experts in mocap, contemporary dance, choreography, and interactive media design, participants will experience dancing inside a digital environment, exploring how movement interacts with real-time motion capture technology. This is an opportunity to develop new skills for performing in virtual spaces, with applications across industries such as film and television, video games, live and interactive performances, and advertising.