Title: Out of Thin Air: Lightness
Premiere: February 4, 5, 6, &7, 2010, University Dance Company, Power Center, Ann Arbor. Presented in theUM Dance Department’s major annual production,
“(Re) Visonary Dances” a program of four dance works,
Duration: 13 minutes
Digital collage of text and music: conceived by Jessica Fogel
Sound design: Michelle Chamuel
Set design: Kasia Mrowzewska
Costumes: Rebecca Baygents Turk
Lighting design: Mary Cole
Description: This work was inspired by hot topics in the field of particle physics occurring at the time I was researching and rehearsing the dance, especially the race to discover the Higgs boson. I was drawing upon the enormous excitement building at CERN. Interviews with leading physicists, gleaned from video, radio programs, and television news reports, including a radio interview with Frank Wilczek, the 2008 Nobel Laureate in Physics, form part of the score for the dance. Wilczek describes the space around us as anything but empty— “an effervescent medium full of lively interactions between virtual particles--quantum fluctuations.” Italo Calvino’s essay “Lightness” in his 1985 book Six Memos for the Next Millennium also informs the work. Solidity is dissolved and space becomes an entity filled with charged activity.
The faculty choreographers had been forewarned by University Productions that our Power Center programs were too dark and heavy for our audiences. Irritated that we were being asked to entertain, I decided to free associate on the notion of lightness versus heaviness. I put a NY Times tracker on any story that mentioned “lightness.” From this I got fashion articles about transparent garments, which became inspiration for Rebecca’s stunning organza silk costumes; articles about wine and food; and articles about theoretical physics. I was thrilled to work with Kasia as set designer, who took some of the particle collision patterns I had been studying and transferred them to a transparent curtain that hung across the stage. Words gleaned from an interview with Michio Kaku, included in the score of the dance, inspired for me the idea of a floating chair that hung above the stage, emphasizing the space between particles. As the dance began, the audience sat in darkness, hearing my voice quoting Kaku: “Atoms are essentially empty space. Now how can we reconcile that with the fact that matter appears to be solid?….Now, you may think you're sitting in your chair, but actually that's not true.” Then the chair floated into view on stage. A feather was released from above, and a dancer began a feather blowing game as other dancers entered. Even in searching for music, I searched for titles with “lightness” referenced. One of the music excerpts I used, an experimental violin score by Vicki Brown, was entitled “(W)as Light as a Feather.” This dance built upon my long interest in creating dances inspired by developments in physics, beginning with Connoisseurs of Chaos, created in 1990.
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Photos by Peter Smith below.