Watch My Skeleton Dance

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SStumbled in compression shorts and adorned with reflective motion-capture dots scattered across my body, I recently danced in front of a series of cameras as a team of researchers looked on. Apparently, I was there to help them understand lower back pain, an affliction I’ve become all too familiar with these days. As part of their analysis, they capture daily body movements made by myself and other study participants, scanning our skeletons and looking for patterns in the painful bends and stretches of our aching bones.

I wasn’t asked to dance. I was simply told to bend over and stretch. But for me, being transformed into a cartoon skeleton was too good an opportunity to limit myself to impartial data collection. And being in the middle of spooky season, I thought it was appropriate to imitate a classic routine, first performed by icons of early animation. Fortunately, my scientific leaders gave in to my fantasy. Here I present my interpretation of 1929 The Skeleton DanceWalt Disney’s first Silly Symphony animated short film.

First the original:

And now my opinion:

All this happened in the lab of Linda Van Dillen, a physical therapy researcher at nearby Washington University in St. Louis, whose study I enrolled after I twisted my back a few months ago doing household chores.

Van Dillen and his colleagues seek to ease the suffering of people suffering from what they call low back pain. Worldwide, it is the leading cause of disability, affecting nearly 60 to 80 percent of adults at some point in their lives. By studying people suffering from different degrees of pain like mine for several months after this first pang of pain, his team seeks to characterize the transition from acute low back pain to chronic low back pain. If they can identify similarities in the way people with acute and chronic back pain move, doctors and therapists might be able to target specific areas of the body before that initial pain becomes long-standing pain, Van Dillen told me recently in an email.

So every month or so, my fellow study subjects and I travel to WashU to help Van Dillen’s team capture the characteristic movements of people dealing with such pain. Once there, researchers cover our legs, pelvis, chest and a single arm with reflective dots and have us perform simple movements, such as bending over to pick up a box. They record everything with 8 high-tech motion capture cameras, the kind used in Hollywood blockbusters that bring impossible creatures to life on the big screen. Between sessions, we complete surveys that track not only our pain symptoms, but also other biological and psychological factors related to our ongoing discomfort.

Scientists will later analyze the data they collect, aiming to improve and standardize the assessment process doctors use to diagnose and treat people with lower back pain. By tracking our progress over the course of a year, Van Dillen and his team hope to emerge with a better method for early detection and treatment of this pain. These improvements could stop acute lower back pain before it becomes a chronic problem, thereby reducing “healthcare costs for this often costly and long-term condition,” she said.

A laudable scientific goal, of course. But it’s also the perfect opportunity to have a little fun. Enjoy my dancing skeleton and let it remind you, as it did me, that lack of seriousness is sometimes the best medicine.

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Main image: Photo from 1929 The Skeleton Dancethe first Silly Symphony Since Walt Disney

• Bob Grant

  Published on October 16, 2025

  Bob Grant is the associate editor of Nautilus.