Dance Your Ph.D. Contest - A Wonderful Merging of Dance and Science
The Dance Your Ph.D. Contest is a wonderful example of a number of trends and developments that I've been intrigued by since starting my blog in 2005:
- It integrates dance with other disciplines, in this case science
- Dances are made by both amateur and professional choreographers and dancers
- There is both a live performance element and an online user-generated video component, and
- The funding for this project points to new and expanded revenue sources for choreographers and dancers
John Bohannon, a visiting scholar at Harvard University and a writer for Science Magazine, created this competition in 2008 with funding from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Bohannon described the objective of this contest in a February 2008 article he wrote in Science: "Using no words or images, interpret your Ph.D. thesis in dance form." There were twelve video submissions for this launch contest, which you can watch on YouTube.
The winner in the Professor Category was Vince LiCata who created a dance for his Ph.D. Title: "Resolving Pathways of Functional Coupling in Human Hemoglobin Using Quantitative Low Temperature Isoelectric Focusing of Asymmetric Mutant Hybrids":
For this year's competition, the four winners were then paired with professional choreographers who each created a new dance work based on a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal. The winning scientists explained the underlying science and the choreographer created their interpretation of this research material. (Read article in Science, "The Science Dance Match-Up Challenge.")
These four dances were then performed on February 13, 2009 at the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois. You can watch these four performances. Here's the choreography of Helena Reynolds:
The Internet audience can also get involved in this dance competition. After reading the peer-reviewed research articles and watching the four professionally-choreographed dances, you can link to the section "Can You Match Them?" in the April Science magazine article. Here you will be able to choose which dance illustrates each scientific paper. A challenging task.
I wonder if it's easier for scientists to interpret the dance or dancers to interpret the science?
To learn more about this science-dance competition, I encourage you to read and watch "Dance Dance, Science Revolution" in February 18, 2009 PBS Art Beat.
Posted by
Doug Fox on April 29, 2009 9:30 AM
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A wonderful post. Inspired me to think of what my job (writer) would be like as a dance. Hmmm. A pas de deux in aeron chairs? Anyway, I love this blog!
To be honest - I'm a little torn about the second half of the experiment. I loved the first part - I even participated! But as a scientist who regularly uses genetics, cellular/molecular techniques, even *I* didn't want to read through the abstracts. Also, there are a theater full of people who saw the dances live, and know the answer to which dances match up to which person's thesis.
I do get your point though - I've never thought about it from a marketing point of view, but there are a lot of great things about this "experiment". As a scientist, it was a cathartic exercise to be able to approach my science in a completely different yet equally creative way. Science truly isn't a science, it's an art. Thanks for posting, Doug!
So the online matching challenge isn't completely fair in the end since some people already know the answers. But I still find it a fun competition because it requires that you really analyze the movements to find the connection with the science.
I would like to see this experiment brought to other fields. And it would also be interesting to interview the participating scientists with no background in dance and see how their thoughts about dance have changed since the beginning of the project.
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3 Comments
A wonderful post. Inspired me to think of what my job (writer) would be like as a dance. Hmmm. A pas de deux in aeron chairs? Anyway, I love this blog!
To be honest - I'm a little torn about the second half of the experiment. I loved the first part - I even participated! But as a scientist who regularly uses genetics, cellular/molecular techniques, even *I* didn't want to read through the abstracts. Also, there are a theater full of people who saw the dances live, and know the answer to which dances match up to which person's thesis.
I do get your point though - I've never thought about it from a marketing point of view, but there are a lot of great things about this "experiment". As a scientist, it was a cathartic exercise to be able to approach my science in a completely different yet equally creative way. Science truly isn't a science, it's an art. Thanks for posting, Doug!
Jolene,
That's great you participated.
So the online matching challenge isn't completely fair in the end since some people already know the answers. But I still find it a fun competition because it requires that you really analyze the movements to find the connection with the science.
I would like to see this experiment brought to other fields. And it would also be interesting to interview the participating scientists with no background in dance and see how their thoughts about dance have changed since the beginning of the project.
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