LIBERTY Ostrava’s ‘Dance for life’ is back!  

LIBERTY Ostrava is back at the Festival in the Streets with its “Dance for Life” event. The Festival in the Streets event is part of the lead up to the famous Colours of Ostrava music festival, which runs from 19-22 July and of which LIBERTY is a sponsor.  

The event gave LIBERTY Ostrava to highlight its partnership of the Flamingos Ostrava para hockey team by bringing back its popular dance party, where guests can have fun while also helping a worthy cause.  

Participants in the festival are expected to move to the rhythm of the music and imitate the choreography of the dancers on stage. The goal is to copy their movements as best as they can, and dance as much as possible, to gain the highest amount that LIBERTY Ostrava donates to the Ostrava para hockey team Flamingos Ostrava.

I had the idea of a dance system where people could generate money for a good cause back in 2010. The aim was to draw attention to worthy non-profit projects in the region that Ostrava steelworks could support.

Since then, Dance for Life has undergone several technological transformations. In the beginning, people danced on dance pads known from the games “Dance, Dance, Revolution”. Later, we programmed a unique system where several Microsoft Kinect cameras compared in real time the movements of a model dancer with the movements of other dancers. This year, we have improved Dance for Life even more, replacing the camera array with gyroscope bracelets and using artificial intelligence to assist in the movement evaluation system. This allowed us to increase the number of dancers on the floor and also solved the limitations of Kinect, which was bothered by direct sunlight.

Also nicer is the visuals on the large LED screen behind the model dancer, which now reacts live to each song differently. The Dance for Life project has become a popular and sought-after part of Colours of Ostrava and Festival in the Streets, which LIBERTY Ostrava has long supported.

Radim Raszka, CSR specialist at LIBERTY Ostrava

Guests also enjoyed coffee and ice creams served by baristas of the Mental Café whose mission is to create opportunities to promote inclusivity and acceptance of disabled people, or learn how to shoot a goal with the Flamingos para hockey players and our GFG Foundation.