In The Spirit of Kangie, Kangie (meaning “gathering of joy”), we uplift  Nobuko Miyamoto’s choreographic movement,  intentionally crafted as a regathering after the COVID-19 pandemic. In Bon-Odori, a Japanese and Japanese American Buddhist tradition, we dance together in a circle to honor our ancestors and celebrate life by moving together as a community.

The vol-cap performances of Nobuko Miyamoto, Chie Saito, and Lani Yamanaka transformed a traditional communal Obon dance into multiple distinct projects.

The Spirit of Kangie’s volumetric capture was filmed at Metastage Studio for NI DO TO XR: a transplanted pilgrimage, commissioned by Georgia Tech Arts in 2023.

The Spirit of Kangie explores the use of real-time volumetric holography and motion tracking to support embodied cultural learning through interactive media. The installation featured life-sized holographic projections of Japanese folk dances on Hologauze from Holitronica, a fully silver projection gauze. Volumetric recordings of dancers demonstrating the steps were captured at Metastage in LA.

Recently on display at Japanese American Museum San Jose, the Looking Glass device uses a lightfield display to showcase 3D affected assets for viewers to see in multiple perspectives. To create the holographic effect, a lenticular lens is overlaid on a very high resolution pixel display, giving each pixel not only a color, but also a direction. The dance performance is then photographed (or, in the case of The Spirit of Kangie, rendered) from 48 different viewpoints. The results are then combined in software such that all 48 movies play at once, with each pixel on the screen pulled from the image which matches the view as seen from that pixel's direction.

The Spirit of Kangie, is on view from July 6 – August 24, 2025, as a part of Dancing the Algorithm at Jacob’s Pillow. Curated by Katherine Helen Fisher, Dancing the Algorithm runs as the inaugural season of Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Theater, an historic home for dance and innovation. 

These assets were used to create a holographic dance tutorial in real time human interactive computing. For Dancing the Algorithm, The Spirit of Kangie is edited by John Crawford, EJ Johnson, and Tiffany Schmidt in Unity, Unreal, and Adobe Premiere Pro.