Evaluation of Geometric Attractor Structure and Recurrence Analysis in Professional Dancers

Background: Human motor systems contain nonlinear features. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the geometric structure of attractors and analyze recurrence in two different pirouettes (jazz and classic) performed by 15 professional dancers. Methods: The kinematics of the body’s center of mass (CoM) and knee of the supporting leg (LKNE) during the pirouette were measured using the Vicon system. A time series of selected points were resampled, normalized, and randomly reordered. Then, every second time series was flipped to be combined with other time series and make a long time series out of the repetitions of a single task. The attractors were reconstructed, and the convex hull volumes (CHV) were counted for the CoM and LKNE for each pirouette in each direction. Recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) was used to extract additional information. Results: The CHVs calculated for the LKNE were significantly lower for the jazz pirouette. All RQA measures had the highest values for LKNE along the mediolateral axis for the jazz pirouette. This result underscores the high determinism, high motion recurrence, and complexity of this maneuver. Conclusions: The findings offer new insight into the evaluation of the approximation of homogeneity in motion control. A high determinism indicates a highly stable and predictive motion trajectory.