Can we understand difficult scientific concepts through dance?
Working with researchers at the Theoretical Physics Group at University of Leeds (Dr Chris Turner, Ms Erin McNeill and Dr Zlatko Papic) and All or Nothing Dance Theatre we endeavoured to find out via a mass audience participation project.
Following our instructional videos, online participants learned dances, filmed themselves and submitted their footage to be choreographed into a final performance.
We were interested to see if the artistic choices the dancers made could connect them to other, distant dancers? Whether, when viewed together, patterns would emerge like they do in nature and in physics? And ultimately, if scientific concepts such as chaos or entanglement could be engaged with intuitively and understood or explained through movement.
The finished film is one result of this experiment, bringing together the scientific ideas we were exploring, the choices made by dancers, and the shared narrative of our lives in lockdown.
This is what emerged…
About The Project
This project was an R&D supported by EPSRC funding through the Theoretical Physics Group at the University of Leeds. The pilot took place Winter 2020 – Spring 2021. We then ran Quantum Magic again as part of the Cheltenham Science Festival.
If you are interested in running a version of Quantum Magic, or exploring participatory/ creative engagement within your field of research, please get in touch via [email protected].