Monday, April 8, 2024

Infinite Dance Sport

Julia Seleznyov, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in Computer Science

For my final project, I worked on something super cool that combined my love for computer science and my deep knowledge of ballroom dancing. I am creating a special app or website that makes judging big ballroom dance competitions easier and more organized.

In the world of ballroom dancing, they use a detailed point system to make sure everyone gets a fair shot and to help dancers figure out where they can improve. It's similar to how they judge Olympic figure skating, looking at things such as how technically good the dance is, the overall performance, the music, and the choreography.

Currently different dance organizations around the world have their own ways of scoring. But in the United States, we're trying to make our own system by taking the best parts from other systems. I found out about this when I was involved in competitions, and my coach asked me to help because there aren't many examples of point systems for ballroom dancing online. We're mostly relying on what we can see with our own eyes.

The main idea behind our app is to give each judge their own login, where they can focus on the specific things they're judging. All of their scores get sent to one central place, making everything more organized. We also want to store this information in a way that makes it easy for dancers to see and use the results to improve. Our big dream is to use this system in competitions all across the United States and connect American and European competitions.

To build the app, we chose Snowflake, a web-based platform. We set up three judges with their own logins and put in information about six top dancers and five different dances. Judges would pick a couple and dance, then give scores in four categories: how technically good it was, how well they moved to the music, the choreography, and how well they performed and partnered. Once the scores were in, a success message would pop up, and the scores would go into a big database. We also made charts and graphs to make the scores easy to understand.

Snowflake was super helpful because it let me handle both the look of the app (the front end) and the technical stuff behind the scenes (the back end). I used Python and Streamlit for the front end, making it easy to edit the app in real-time. For the back end, I created databases on Snowflake and input the info using an Excel sheet, making sure everything connected smoothly. I even designed the logo using Canva and put it online for the project.

In the end, finishing this project makes me really happy, and I'm excited to keep making it even better. This mix of computer science and ballroom dancing isn't just solving a problem in competitions—it's laying the groundwork for more cool ideas in the future!




No comments:

Post a Comment