TALK GIVEN AT STEPS SYMPOSIUM, ZURICH APRIL 29 2014
In 1987 the American choreographer Merce Cunningham
premiered live at the City Theatre New York, his piece ‘Points in Space’ originally
made for television.
Shown on the BBC the year
before, and deliberately choreographed
for many cameras so that the one piece offers a
multiplicity of points of views, its title derives from the physicist Albert Einstein’s remark in his
theory of relativity - ‘There are no
fixed points in space.’ In this theory,
the observed is not static, but is dependent on the point of view of the
observer – the gaze of multiple cameras becoming a metaphor for this constant
displacement of one organizing principle and gaze.
This constant movement led
to ‘Points in Space’ being reviewed in the New York Times as ‘a piece of ceaseless comings and goings, assemblies and
dispersals’ – showing all the Cunningham hallmarks of displacing the linear
plot driven narrative of traditional dance with a dynamic, non-hierarchical field
in which cause and effect no longer govern the
movements in the performance. Instead the variety of displacements celebrates
the singleness of any one moment(s) in time and space as experienced
differently by individuals, even when in groups. The collective is always
individual – however unified it may at first appear.
The piece’s title directly
shows the influence of physics and
relativity in Cunningham’s use of chance and indeterminancy in his work - not just the always talked about influence
of the IChing and Taoism. At the liberal arts institution of Black Mountain
College in North Carolina, where Cunningham taught with his partner in life and
arts, the theorist and composer John
Cage on and off between 1948-53, interdisciplinarity and the garnering of new
ideas from different fields was part of every day life – so much so that even
at meal times Cunningham remarked:
“You were just as likely to
sit with the Physics School as anyone else. It was something where you gained
by experience, by observing by listening and talking (quoted in Cunningham,
Kirk, Goodman 1996)
The ideas of physics – how
the universe came into being, what it is, and our place in it – is in fact the
enquiry of the arts – so interdisciplinarity and exchange of ideas between physics, the most philosophical of our
sciences which looks at the how of existence, with the arts which also looks at the why, is a natural
partnership of mutual attraction and sincerity.
Now fast forward to the next
century and the work of the american
dancer and choreographer Karole Armitage, who herself was part of the
Cunningham Dance Company 1976-81 and
began her career as a dancer at the Grand Theatre de Geneve in the 1970s.
Inspired by the physicist Brian Greene’s award winning popular book ‘The
Elegant Universe’, Karole created the ballet ‘Three Theories’ for the 2010
World Science Festival in New York. She used the three key discoveries in the twentieth century history of particle
physics as the drivers for creating the vocabulary for her choreography –
relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory.
From Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity, she took his theories of gravity as the warping and twisting of the
space-time fabric which keeps the universe in balance as the vocabulary for her
movement.
For Quantum Theory, as she
said in interview ‘everything is completely full of juxtapositions and non sequiturs’ and she incorporated into this dance
vocabulary a principle called sum-over-paths. This principle is that particles in order to go from Point A to Point B take
every possible path in 360 degree dimensions - they just don't go straight in one line from A to B. So she made
one phrase of movement, and then reinterpreted it in many diverse ways.
For String Theory, which
states that the fundamental matter in the universe could be a vibrating string
created by complicated geometries – she created great blocks of quivering
movement - ‘cloud-like formation of dancers’ within which identical
movements or phrases were performed in very different ways, then built towards
a ‘built-in feeling of resolution’
- order emerging from disorder.
So unquestionably the science of particle physics
is an attractive source of ideas for
dance both in terms of theme and content as shown by the engagement across two centuries of such notable choreographers as Karole Armitage
and Merce Cunningham. But what is the
basis of this attraction? That was the question which I was also asked to address with this talk at this
STEPS Symposium: in my case I am addressing with exclusive reference to particle physics. It is
the science I know and have loved - long before I even created the Collide@CERN artists residency programme which
officially began at CERN in 2012 with our first two residents, the visual artist Julius von Bismarck and the
swiss choreography Gilles Jobin.
There is one main fundamental reason why particle physics
and dance are so attracted to each other. Because in essence dance is physics
and physics is dance. Physics is defined as the science which deals with
matter, energy, motion and forces, and the interactions between them. Swap the
word physics with that of dance, and science with the creative practice, and
you get a working definition of dance - dance is the creative art form which deals
with matter, energy, motion and forces, and the interactions between them - showing the shared core components of both
disciplines. After all, what would dance be without its investigations through
movement of the limits of matter (the human body) energy, motion, gravity
forces, momentum and interactions?
In the movement of the human
body, dance is physics embodied – a living moving, breathing and quivering/trembling (the earliest
etymology of the word dance is from the
old Frisian word dintje meaning quiver, tremble) experiment in motion, energy and mass. After
all E= mc 2 as Einstein said – but in dance it is expressed, recovered and
discovered again and again through
the human body.
So having a choreographer in
residence at CERN the world’s largest
particle physics laboratory outside Geneva in 2012 seems entirely synergistic
because the motivations of particle physics and dance make them natural
partners.
Then one just looks at the
investigations which particle physics makes and the ideas it throws up which
provide key questions for choreographers and dancers alike. For example, particle physics reveals that gravity
is in fact the weakest force and the one of the forces which science knows the
least about. Say that to a dancer and that is shocking: any notion of
groundedness alters profoundly – and the ideas of the vertical and horizontal axis
smashed to smithereens.
A physicist says that the
very fact that you can lift your arm shows how weak gravity is – because if it
was forceful, you wouldn't be able to lift it at all. It is electro-magneticism,
not gravity which keeps you fixed down here on earth – not gravity. And
electro-magneticism itself opens a whole new world of possibilities too, when
you unpack its meaning with a physicists eye. It is a whole world of non-contact
forces in which repulsion and attraction oscillate according to the constituent
parts of matter – the further away you are, the more attracted you are.
Take another idea like that
of the void – the empty space. Particle physics would say there is no such thing
as empty space in the classical sense of the word – a place where nothing is
happening. Quite the contrary – the void is full of movement. energy and
electrical charge. Again knowing this, changes a choreographer’s notion of
movement in empty space and how we see emptiness.
Or look at the ground
beneath your feet. Again a physicist would say to you that it is 95% full of
holes – and it is not solid – however much you think it is. The voids/holes in
matter are a fundamental part of the whole – again held together by
electro-magneticism. Solid state of matter
in fact is a vaporous state, and the whole idea of inertia and stillness is
also false: when our bodies are still, they are still in a state of perpetual
motion – or dancing if you like – with the particles below the neural networks
hurtling inside us. In fact, the body is one of the few places on the planet
where anti-matter still exists like it did
at the beginning of the world. It collides in our bodies spasmodically
with matter and annihilates inside us – mimicking that first moment when the
world was created in the Big Bang as well as the birth of stars.
These were some of the ideas
which bombarded our first Collide@CERN choreographer
in residence, Gilles Jobin in 2012. As he said in his blog of his residency:
“I
found out about the 4 fundamental forces and the fact that gravity was the
weakest of all the forces. For a contemporary dancer formed basically around
the question of gravity and “groundness” that came as a total shock! I was not
a “pile of stuff”, but particles bound together by the strong force and
“floating” on the surface of the earth… Me, the earth, you readers, the LHC
flying at incredible speed through space, without any of us, (including the
physicists!) noticing anything… Stardust flying into space… I was
baffled…”
The scientists and the ideas Gilles encountered during his 3 month residency at the laboratory shook his dance training to the core and the way he had previously looked at the world he lives, moves and breathes in:
“Many of the concepts I was about to discover during my residency would have a deep philosophical impact on the way I was considering the movement of a body in space…”
As well as blasting Gilles with the ideas about the dynamic world of mobile matter in which we live, the harsh, stripped back functional environment of this immense working particle laboratory proved to be an inspiration too. A hallmark of the Collide@CERN residencies are the interventions – when the artists deliberately create happenings and intervene in the spaces of the laboratory – some which the public do not have access to. One of Gilles’s most successful interventions was in the hallowed place for physics research – the CERN library. The intervention was called Strangels – a deliberate pun on Wim Wender’s angels in his film Wings of Desire as well as the particle called a stranglette. Here is a description of the intervention in Gille’s own words:
“My
idea was to “melt” our bodies into the timeline of the library. Like time
chameleons, we were to adapt our movements and presence to the quiet and
studious atmosphere of the library and be practically unnoticed…. There is a
special texture to “time” inside the library. How long is an afternoon in a
library? Never ending or passing by too quickly? It is a shared space, with the
unique density you can feel in studious atmosphere and its user’s different
virtual timelines. We melted into the element of the library and as we guessed,
our “unusual” presence and actions did not create conflicts with our
surroundings and the students at work. It was a bit like entering slowly into
water and becoming part of the element without disturbing its balance.”
A
photograph taken of Gilles and his dancers tumbling in front of a physicist
studiously studying in the library and
not noticing them, went viral around the world when it was picked up by the
Huffington Post and the Guardian. In
essence it showed how the concentration of a dancer to be invisible whilst
moving more than matched the concentration of the physicist focused on his
study. The piece was a meditation on the focus of dance and physics.
Other
interventions into the spaces of the laboratory made different aspects of physics
physical to the dancers:
“Flows
of knowledge inside the library, torrents of datas in the Calcul Center, beam
of anti matter in a huge laboratory, even the cafeteria, social epicentre of
mathematic minds, we physically explored different functional spaces and felt
it in our bones… It was only by crossing our paths in space and time that we,
the “physicals” could meet with the “physicists”.
Thus Gilles Jobin had intellectual (mind) and physical (body) encounters in time and space with the unknown and was taken out of his depth by the residency. After all, the whole philosophy of Collide@CERN is that by encountering the unfamiliar and the unknown that new creativity and possibilities emerge – in a way mimicking the fact unpacked by particle physics that with anti matter meeting matter and annihilating, the universe was created in the first place.
Out of his time of constant
displacement and replacement at the lab emerged a new dance piece called ‘Quantum’
which went on to win the Hermes New Settings Award with a dynamic light installation
which dances with the dancers by the first Collide@CERN artist, Julius von Bismarck.
It world premiered at CERN in Autumn 2013 in one of the great detector halls on
the campus and fittingly was danced above the very spot where the Higgs Boson was
detected – the new particle discovered in 2012 which gives mass to particles.
Quantum then opened in Paris, is now on
tour in South America, ending its international tour in the USA in New York
this fall at the prestigious BAM.
Some final words and thoughts
on the connections between dance and physics –and their fitting partnership.
First from Karole Armitage. She talks about growing up with her biologist father
in Kansas and in the Rocky Mountains, hanging out with scientists such as John
Holdren the physicist who is now Obama’s science adviser and Paul Erhlich who
wrote ‘The Population Bomb. “
“They all had such a sense
of humility that science and their observations were much more important than
their ego, and I think dance is very much like that. We try to fulfill the idea
of what dance is, and you can never be that good because dance is greater than
the individual and science is greater than the individuals. I like the discipline, the humility and its
mind expanding.” (Interview by Lukas Ligeti)
Next words from the theorist
and composer John Cage, Cunningham’s partner, who understood that ideas are
springboards of the imagination:
“Art changes because changes in science give
the artist a different understanding of nature.”
Finally some notes in the
present – and also from the future too:
“My
dance and choreography training has helped me define what “understanding” truly
means for me. Before I teach a new lesson or work on a problem set, I have to
feel like I can dance through the concept with my eyes closed.”
These
words are by Harvard physics undergraduate - and
dancer - Mariel Pettee. Last year she interned with the Collide@CERN
programme whilst also working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN. This May she
dances – not writes – a thesis as part of the finals of her physics degree. Dance is
physics, physics is dance. Perhaps one of these days physicists will create new
theories through dance, and dancers will discover new dimensions of movement
through physics. Except perhaps they already have -
ENDS
SOURCES
Karole Armitage by Lukas
Ligeti http://bombmagazine.org/article/3334/karole-armitage
Gilles Jobin’s blog of his
Collide@CERN residency
Emerging choreographer Move
with Science – Harvard University Blog
Mariel Pettee’s creative
thesis for the physics department at Harvard University. http://www.symmbreak.com/#about
Collide@CERN website
Collide@CERN Facebook
BeautyQuark – blogspot –
read about William Forsythe and the relationship of dance to particle
physics in a personal blog about physics
by Ariane Koek www.beauty-quark-beautyquark.blogspot
