Methodology
Practice Based Research
This project follows a practice based research methodology built on collaboration between dance, music production and digital fashion design. The process is iterative and cyclical. Knowledge moves between the dancer, the music and the design, and each stage informs the next.
Musical Environment
Every session begins with an original music composition produced specifically for the project. The mix is structured in two distinct parts : Deep House and Ndombolo, connected by a strong transition break in the middle.
This structure is not aesthetic. It is methodological. Each musical style is designed to provoke a different quality of movement. Deep House encourages fluid, exploratory and spatial dynamics. Ndombolo generates grounded, rhythmic and culturally rooted body responses. By composing the music before the dance session, the research shapes the movement environment intentionally.
The final mix used for the project combines both compositions into a single two minute sequence, moving from House of Whitney into The Call through a strong transitional break.
House of Whitney : House of Whitney is an original deep house instrumental I produced as part of an upcoming EP called House of Love, a dedicated deep house project originally conceived for my first Ibiza set, a 60 minute mix. The full version is built around the a cappella of Whitney Houston from Where Do Broken Hearts Go, but for the Body as Pattern project I used the instrumental version.
The title House of Love is both a tribute and a statement. It is a dedication to Mr. Fingers, one of the original creators of deep house, and a play on the word love, because this EP is built entirely around that energy. Deep house is not just a genre for me. It is my foundation, one of my deepest musical loves, and this project is my way of spreading that feeling.
Within Body as Pattern, the instrumental version of House of Whitney creates the first movement environment of the mix. Its fluid and continuous rhythm encourages an exploratory, sensual and spatial quality of movement in the dancer, contrasting with the grounded and culturally rooted energy that The Call generates in the second part.
LONG VERSION FINAL Whitney Houston Where Do Broken Heart Go Remix DJ NS.mp3
FL Studio arrangement view of House of Whitney, showing the multi-track composition built around the Whitney Houston a cappella and deep house drum and synth layers.
The Call : The Call is a track I produced in collaboration with a beatmaker from Central Congo, Malatrack. The full version of the track also features Guccima, an atalaku based in Paris, whose vocal performance adds an additional rhythmic and cultural layer to the composition.
The origin of this track is deeply connected to my personal journey in music. Before becoming a DJ, I had already experimented with beatmaking when I was very young. After a long period in my life where I had completely stopped producing music, I went through a moment of deep reflection about my creative path.
During this time, I experienced what I can only describe as a powerful internal call. It felt like a strong force or energy urging me to return to music production. The feeling was so clear and intense that it shaped the identity of the track itself.
This experience is what inspired the title The Call. The track represents that moment of reconnection with a creative energy that had always been present in my life.
The Call is the first track of my upcoming EP Mwana Mama. Within the Body as Pattern project, its Ndombolo inspired rhythms create a grounded and energetic physical response in the body, contrasting with the fluid and continuous movement encouraged by the Deep House section of the mix.
Movement Exploration
The dancer improvises freely on the music composition in an open studio environment. No choreography is imposed. The body responds to the sound instinctively, generating its own vocabulary of gestures, trajectories and spatial dynamics.
The project has involved two dancers across two phases. Mimi, a multi-style dancer rooted in belly dance traditions, led the first exploratory session, shaping the early direction of the research. Wendy, an experienced afro dance practitioner based in the North West of England, leads the main movement capture phase, bringing a deep physical vocabulary rooted in West African and Ndombolo dance traditions.
Video Capture
Each session is filmed in full. The footage captures the complexity of movement including gestures, body lines, spatial trajectories and dynamic qualities that cannot be reduced to a single still image.
Movement Analysis and Freeze Capture
The recorded material is analysed to identify specific moments where the body generates strong visual structures. Selected frozen frames are extracted from the footage. These freezes are not chosen randomly. They are selected for the quality of the lines, angles and volumes they reveal. The body becomes a drawing tool. Each captured pose is a potential design.
Design Extraction and Dancer Feedback
Lines, shapes and structural forms are drawn directly from the captured poses. At this stage the dancer is consulted. Her reading of the captures, what she felt, what she recognises in her own frozen body, influences which design directions are pursued.
For this project Wendy identified sharp and edgy forms in the Deep House section and earthy, wide and rounded shapes in the Ndombolo section. These responses directly informed the visual and structural decisions of the garment design.
Digital Garment Development
The extracted designs are developed into a digital garment using CLO3D and Blender. The garment is not a representation of the dance. It is a direct translation of it. The two movement registers, sharp and edgy from Deep House, round and earthy from Ndombolo, inform two distinct design languages within the same piece.
Animation and Synchronisation
The completed garment is animated and synchronised to the original music composition. The same sound that generated the movement now drives the movement of the fabric. The garment dances on the music that made the body dance.
Final Outputs
The final outcomes of the project will include :
The original music mix combining House of Whitney and The Call into a single two minute sequence
Video documentation of the dance sessions with Mimi and Wendy
Freeze captures extracted from the footage used as design references
Textile and surface designs generated from the movement captures
A digital garment developed in CLO3D and Blender, born directly from the dancer's movement vocabulary
A digital fashion animation where the garment moves synchronised to the original music mix
Generative Body
Through this process, the dancer's body becomes a generative design tool, transforming movement into textile pattern and digital fashion form. The methodology produces knowledge that no single discipline could generate alone. This is not fashion design illustrated by dance. This is fashion design generated by the body.
An Ongoing Research
Body as Pattern is not a finished project. It is a living research process. The methodology developed here is designed to evolve with each new session, each new collaborator and each new movement vocabulary encountered. The dance sessions, the design translations and the garment development documented on this site represent the current stage of an ongoing exploration. The research will continue beyond this point, expanding the method and deepening the dialogue between movement, music and digital fashion design.
