Module 5: Drone Dance Party – Choreography in the Air

WOVEN

Drone Dance Party

The Grand Finale · Fly to the Music

UC Merced Drone Workshop · You already fly. You already code. Now make it a show.

Your mission: pick a song, choreograph a drone to move with the beat, and perform it live while your crew dances alongside. You can fly it by hand or program it. The best crews will practice a short section until the drone and the dancers hit the music together. Let's build a show.

🎬 Build Your Crew

A drone show is a team job. Stay in your pair if you want, or team up into a bigger crew so more people can dance and film. Pick your roles before you touch a drone.

👥 Your roles

Pilot — flies the drone (by hand or runs the program). • Music Captain — plays the song from their phone or a speaker. • Filmer — records the final take and posts it. • Dancers — everyone else, moving with the drone.

📶 Why you need more than one phone

The Pilot's phone joins the drone's own wifi to fly it, so that phone cannot play music or post online at the same time. That is exactly why the Music Captain and Filmer use their own phones. If your crew is just a pair, grab one of the room speakers for music so your partner's phone is free to film.

Step 1 — Pick your song

The drone does not move instantly, so the song matters. Use this checklist and grab just a 45 to 60 second stretch, not the whole track.

✅ A steady beat you can count out loud • ✅ Slow-to-medium tempo (fast songs lose the drone) • ✅ Clear sections you can hear (an intro, a build, a chorus) • ✅ School-appropriate lyrics

Step 2 — Pick your challenge level

Base: one drone, flown by hand. • Stretch — Program it: code your moves in the TSpeed7 app instead of flying live. • Boss level — Double Trouble: choreograph two drones together. Way harder. Big payoff.

🗺️ Map the Moves

Choreography is just a plan written down. Before you fly, decide what the drone does in each part of your song, and what the dancers do around it.

Watch first — an example to steal from

See how a drone and dancers hit the same beats together. Notice how the drone holds still on some counts and moves on others. You do not need anything this fancy — steal one idea and make it yours.

🚁 Your move menu

Take off • Land • Rise / Descend • Forward / Back • Slide Left / Right • Hover (hold still) • Spin (rotate in place) • Trick or flip, if your drone has one — check the app

Step 1 — Fill your Flight Card

Copy this table onto your Flight Card. Walk through your 45 to 60 seconds and fill one row per section.

Part of the song	Drone does	Dancers do
Example: Intro	Rise slowly, then hover	Freeze, then step in

💡 Keep it simple to start

Three or four clean moves that land on the beat beat a dozen sloppy ones. Nail a short routine first, then add flair if there is time.

🔁 Practice, Practice, Practice

Nobody nails it on the first run. Real choreographers rehearse in pieces, then chain them together.

⚠️ Flight zone rules

The drone dances inside the taped box on the floor. Dancers move around the box, never reaching in. Hands away from spinning props. When you hear "PROPS DOWN," every drone lands.

Step 1 — Rehearse in pieces

Music Captain plays the song out loud. Pilot flies just the first section until it lands on the beat. Then the next. Then run them back to back. Swap in a fresh battery when the drone gets low — a dead battery mid-show ends the run.

Stretch — Program it in TSpeed7

Want the drone to fly itself? Build your Flight Card as a block program in the TSpeed7 app. The tricky part is timing: you cannot hear the song inside the app, so run your program and the music side by side, watch where they drift, and adjust the wait times between moves. Repeat until they lock together.

Boss level — Double Trouble

Two drones, one routine. Either two pilots flying in sync, or two matched programs launched together. Start them doing the same move at the same time, then try mirror moves (one rises while the other descends). This is genuinely hard. If you pull it off, you have done something most adults cannot.

🎉 Showtime

Time to perform. One clean take is the goal. Everyone else watches and cheers between shows.

Step 1 — Run the show

Fresh battery in. Pilot ready in the flight box, dancers in position, Filmer recording, Music Captain counts you in. Perform your routine start to finish. If it falls apart, reset and go again — you get more than one shot.

📸 Post your show

Filmer posts your best take to The Wall below. Put your crew name in the Subject line and drop your song title in the caption.

★

📺 The Wall

Scan the code or use the board below to post your show. Crew name in the Subject line, song title in the caption. Watch everyone else's while you wait for your turn.

Career Connection

The drone light shows that now replace fireworks over stadiums and city skylines are choreographed by real teams: drone show designers who plan the movement, software engineers who program hundreds of drones to fly in sync, and FAA-licensed pilots who run the flight. You just did the small version of all three jobs. The on-ramp is real and close to home: an FAA Part 107 remote pilot certificate, plus drone and computer-science programs at community colleges and at UC Merced, put first-generation students into aerial imaging, live events, agriculture, and public safety work.

Real Pilots · Real Choreography

You flew a drone, wrote code that moved it, and turned it into a performance timed to music. That is a genuine, rare skill set — and it started with you picking up a controller this week. Take a bow.

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