You wouldn’t think they are natural bedfellows, but dance and science are enjoying a surprising courtship. Wayne McGregor got the ball rolling with his explorations into anatomy and neurological science, explorations that inform all his hyperarticulate and edgy dances. Mark Baldwin followed by successfully taking on Einstein and physics and has now set his sights on Darwin’s theory of evolution. And then there is David Bintley, who has taken up the baton with a new abstract ballet that sets out to entertain audiences with the theory of relativity.
At first glance, the links between science and dance aren’t obvious, unless you want to talk about disciplined thinking and the search for the perfect formula. “Classical ballet strives for order and logic, and for what I would call a kind of rightness,” Bintley says, and scientists do too. But it’s in the world of contemporary dance, where creators routinely favour ideas over narrative, that science has made the greatest inroads.
Witness Baldwin’s 2005 effort for Rambert, Constant Speed, which took on not only the theory of relativity but also Brownian motion. The result was sparky, witty and fun. Or McGregor’s Ataxia (2004) for Random Dance, born of his research into the rare neurological disorder of the same name. Ataxia made us feel the pain and isolation of its sufferers even as it expanded McGregor’s own dance vocabulary. “The word science comes from the Latin word meaning knowledge,” he says. “And I have never thought about science the subject as a thing separate from understanding the knowledge of the body, the knowledge contained in a dance.”
McGregor, the resident choreographer of the Royal Ballet as well as director of his own Random troupe, has long been fascinated by science. He spent months working with the department of neuroscience at Cambridge University on the interface between mind and body and recently collaborated with neuroscientists at the University of California, San Diego, on a project that maps the creative process from a cognitive point of view.
“The brain and body connection is critical in understanding what is contained in a movement — and that’s a rich enough resource to creatively feed me for the foreseeable future,” McGregor says. His newest piece, Dyad 1909, is part of a Sadler’s Wells programme that celebrates the centenary of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Dyad 1909, though essentially an abstract dance, is inspired by the scientific thinking of the Ballets Russes period (1909-1929), most specifically Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition of 1909 and the astounding speed of technological change. “In 20 years we went from discovering the South Pole to flying over it,” McGregor says. He’s working with the artists and film-makers Jane and Louise Wilson, who will provide the setting. The costumes are embellished by Swarovski and the Icelandic composer Olafur Arnalds is providing a new score combining piano, strings and electronics. Dyad 1909 will be performed by Random, who also took part in the San Diego study.
Baldwin studied science at university and has long been fascinated by biology in general and birds in particular. Which came in handy when he was approached by Darwin’s great-grandson, Stephen Keynes, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. Baldwin doesn’t think that it’s a stretch to find parallels between art and evolution. “It’s all to do with ideas,” he says. “Science is about exploration and the new, and challenging everything you have learnt, and so is art.”
Yet, he admits, The Comedy of Change is a daunting prospect. “Mixing dance with science is difficult. I want to make something poetic and didactic, hopefully a piece that makes the science less baffling and more enjoyable.”
The new work has the benefit of a scientific adviser, Nicky Clayton, a Cambridge professor who also happens to be a big dance fan. “What Nicky has done for us is come up with three different ways of looking at biological change,” Baldwin says. “Same But Different; Conceal Yet Reveal; Past and Future.” Baldwin’s choreography, set to a commissioned score by Julian Anderson, plays with these three principles, in certain cases even taking movements directly from nature and referencing the animal world’s courtship dances.
The Comedy of Change isn’t just a new work for Rambert, it’s also a means for the science community to get its message across. “It’s good for our education programme,” Baldwin says. “We get funding from science charities to hold dance and science workshops. Learning about science through dance — there is a really big interest in this.”
Funding has also enabled Rambert to produce a series of films that explain the scientific themes behind the work and how they inspired the creators. And, as part of The Comedy of Change tour, different scientists will join Baldwin at his pre-performance talks to explain their research into the work’s scientific themes.
Bintley is the newcomer on the block (unless you count The Planets, his 1990 creation for the Royal Ballet, set to Holst’s famous score). But you do have to wonder if one of Britain’s leading dancemakers hasn’t suddenly lost the plot. A ballet devoted to E=mc2? Now there’s a tough sell for us science ignoramuses.
Bintley, the artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, admits that when it comes to science he, too, is an ignoramus. His mission is not to educate us into the mysteries of the most famous equation in science, but to give us something fresh and unexpected. “ I read this tremendous book, “E=mc2, the Autobiography of an Equation, by David Bodanis, which is about the science that led to Einstein coming to the discovery of the equation and some of the things that happened afterwards,” he says. “It’s very funny and quite moving, a real page-turner, believe it or not. It’s really a book about the people involved and what a crazy bunch scientists are.”
His new production, named after the equation, “won’t be a typical ballet for me, because I’m trying to challenge myself by finding something different about the language of dance. My interest in all of this is kinetic and also philosophical. The wonder of the creative universe is something I want to get across.”
Bintley’s work will run for 35 minutes, feature more than 30 dancers, have four movements and a commissioned score by the Australian composer Matthew Hindson. “It should be like a symphony, with movements denoting energy, mass and the speed of light,” Bintley says. “Energy depicts the violence of the big bang; Mass is very slow and heavy, like gravity; Speed of Light is pretty fast; I’m hoping it will be the fastest thing I’ve done, but it will also explore whimsy and chance in the Universe. I think it’s God’s humour, if you like. This idea of the Creator having a laugh informs the last movement.” There is also an interlude called The Manhattan Project which, Bintley insists, “has a very strange moment that has to remain a surprise”.
No one is pretending that audiences needs to have an A level in biology or physics to appreciate Baldwin or Bintley’s new creations, or a brain the size of a football to understand McGregor’s artistic thinking. What we are talking about here is inspiration, that elusive magic that breeds art (and science, too, for that matter), and scientific endeavour that is filled with enough scintillating ideas to keep an army of choreographers engaged.
Certainly McGregor sees it that way. “We are only scratching the surface,” he says. “As the brain sciences evolve, so do our horizons. All of this study fundamentally changes how the body is understood — and with this new awareness hopefully comes fresh creativity.”
The Comedy of Change opens at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, on Sept 16. E=mc2 opens at the Birmingham Hippodrome on Sept 23. Dyad 1909 opens at Sadler’s Wells on Oct 13
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