# Dance Style Classification using Laban-Inspired and Frequency-Domain Motion Features

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.20469 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20469/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [Deep Learning-Based Human Pose Estimation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.13392/) (2020)
- [Listen, Denoise, Action! Audio-Driven Motion Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09707/) (2022)
- [Dance Style Recognition Using Laban Movement Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21166/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Dance is an essential component of human culture and serves as a tool for conveying emotions and telling stories. Identifying and distinguishing dance genres based on motion data is a complex problem in human activity recognition, as many styles share similar poses, gestures, and temporal motion patterns. This work presents a lightweight framework for classifying dance styles that determines motion characteristics based on pose estimates extracted from videos. We propose temporal-spatial descriptors inspired by Laban Movement Analysis. These features capture local joint dynamics such as velocity, acceleration, and angular movement of the upper body, enabling a structured representation of spatial coordination. To further encode rhythmic and periodic aspects of movement, we integrate Fast Fourier Transform features that characterize movement patterns in the frequency domain. The proposed approach achieves robust classification of different dance styles with low computational effort, as complex model architectures are not required, and shows that interpretable motion representations can effectively capture stylistic nuances.