Tap dancing...and tapping your wallet

What did $776,372 in Stimulus money do? According to the Recovery.gov website, it created 2.06 jobs (reported as three part-time jobs for students)...

Here at The Bliss Index® Center for Interpretive Dance, we're always thrilled to see appreciation for the lively arts.

But even the Jazz-Tap-Interactive-Dramatic Dance folks on staff here have a difficult time understanding how the following happened...

According to CNS News, "As President Barack Obama is proposing another $447 billion Stimulus plan, some of the money from the previous $800 billion-plus stimulus plan is dancing away. According to Recovery.gov, the website that tracks the money spent under the Recovery Act, The University Of North Carolina is receiving a $762,372 grant for it’s ‘Dance.Draw’ project."

That's $776,372 of Stimulus money being spent...on dance.

The report continues: "The website grant summary explains the project, 'The Dance.Draw system will enable dancers' motions, tracked via small RF transmitters worn in satin cuffs, to act as input streams that can be flexibly applied as control parameters for interactive visualizations. The system will log dancers' motions and will be able to composite video of the dancers with different visualizations, enabling post-hoc analysis of the choreography and exploration of prospective mappings between the motion and the projected media. The 'interactive visualizations' are shown in a Dance.Draw pilot video as a series of projected shapes that move along with the dancers. Among the objectives listed for the project is to 'allow choreographers to explore interactive dance without always having a full cast of dancers present.' The program may diminish the amount of dancers needed onstage to 'explore interactive dance,' but it is creating jobs. (The latest report on the Recovery.gov website shows 2.06, reported as three part-time jobs for students, that have been created with the funds.)"

Dancing the night -- and the money -- away?