Watch my skeleton dance

SStumbling around in compression pants and bejeweled with reflective motion-capture dots scattered all over my body, I recently danced in front of a bank of cameras while a team of researchers watched me. Ostensibly, I was there to help them understand lower back pain, an affliction that had recently become familiar to me. As part of their analysis, they captured everyday body movements that I and other study participants perform, digitized our skeletons and looked for patterns in the painful bends and stretches of our painful bones.

He didn’t ask me to dance. I was told to simply bend and stretch. But for me, becoming a cartoon skeleton was a really great opportunity to limit data collection in an honest way. And since I’m in the midst of this spooky season, I thought it appropriate to imitate a classic routine, first performed by early animation icons. Fortunately, my scientific therapist indulged my whims. Here I offer my interpretation of 1929 Skeleton dancethe first Walt Disney Silly symphony Short animation.

First, the origin:

Now my opinion:

It all happened in the lab of Linda Van Dillen, a physical therapy researcher at nearby Washington University in St. Louis, whose study I joined after I tweaked my back a few months ago while doing housework.

Van Dielen and her colleagues seek to alleviate the suffering of people with what they call low back pain. Worldwide, it is the leading cause of disability, affecting approximately 60-80 percent of adults At some point in their lives. By studying people with varying degrees of pain like myself for several months after the first twinge of pain, her team seeks to describe the transition from acute to chronic low back pain. If they can identify similarities in the ways people with acute and chronic back pain move, doctors and therapists may be able to target specific areas of the body before that initial pain turns into long-term pain, Van Dielen recently told me in an email.

So, every month or so, my classmates and I travel to Washoe to help Van Deelen’s team capture the distinctive movements of people in the grip of such aches and pains. When we get there, researchers cover our legs, pelvis, chest and one arm with reflective dots and ask us to perform simple movements like bending over to pick up a box. They record everything using 8 high-tech motion capture cameras of the type used in Hollywood movies that bring impossible creatures to life on the big screen. Between sessions, we answer questionnaires that track not only our pain symptoms, but also other biological and psychological factors associated with our ongoing discomfort.

Scientists will later analyze the data they collect, with the aim of improving and standardizing the assessment process that doctors use to diagnose and care for those with low back pain. By monitoring our progress over the course of a year, Van Dielen and her team hope to find a better way to detect and treat such pain early. These improvements could stop acute lower back pain before it becomes a chronic problem, reducing “health care spending for this costly and often long-term condition,” she said.

A worthy scientific goal for sure. But it’s also the perfect opportunity to have a little fun. Enjoy my skeleton dance, and please let it remind you – as it does me – that sometimes not being serious is the best medicine.

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Main image: Still from 1929 Skeleton dancethe first Silly symphony from Walt Disney

• Bob Grant

  Posted on October 16, 2025

  Bob Grant is deputy editor at Nautilus.