Ms. TATA - a dancing double entendre -- teases her audience, noting how she "turned on" the genes producing the curves she inherited from her mother, but won't do the same for the diabetes genes from her father.
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Ms. TATA is just one of the characters populating Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's multimedia "Ferocious Beauty: Genome," the end-product of a multi-year collaboration with over 30 scientists aiming to interpret genetics through dance.
The dancers' intersection with science begins in a scene from a "laboratory," where they spiral like the DNA helix, relate in groups of three like codons, and "fly" like
The choreography hits an evocative moment with the story of Mendel and his peas. The black-robed Mendel, portrayed by dancer Ted Johnson, winds his way around the stage, while a video shows Johnson, also as Mendel, tending, counting, and sorting peas. Johnson's winding evokes the sweet peas' growth and the as-yet mysterious structure of the DNA helix. The video switches to images of scientists offering what they would like to tell Mendel. Wesleyan University biochemist Manju Hingorani, who worked with Lerman to develop the program, asks, "Would you like to see a gene? Because it's beautiful."
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On the screen, the images of Mendel's peas are slowly overwritten by the names of important geneticists scrolling past in white. First, Mendel and Darwin. Then, Garrod, Beadle, Tatum, etc. As time goes on, more and more names scroll by, the pace gets furious, and the screen eventually whites out from the sheer number of people currently studying the genome.
One scene shows another video of researchers describing how they would choreograph DNA. One imagines laying the dancers head to toe, head to toe, head to toe, while on stage, dancers wend around each other as they portray genes undergoing various rounds of shuffling and translocations while maintaining the head to toe orientation.
Lerman, a 2002 MacArthur Fellow, and her company relied on the input of top geneticists including Princeton's Bonnie Bassler, Columbia's Nancy Wexler, and Richard Mural from Celera Genomics. And audience members appreciate their voices in the piece, she says -- one of the most common comments she receives is how impressive, passionate and creative the scientists are.
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The performance also captures the importance of genetic variability. Suzanne Richard, a dancer who uses a wheelchair and crutches as a result of the genetic disorder osteogenesis imperfecta, gracefully moves from wheelchair to crutches and back while dancing with the rest of the company. "We need to be sensitive to honoring and valuing the differences between people. Without that variation, we wouldn't be able to do genetics," noted Irene Eckstrand, a National Institutes of Health scientist who participated in the project and an after-performance panel discussion.
Ferocious Beauty demonstrates and celebrates the human drive to create, whether in science or the arts.
"When we are truly doing something new, we have no words for it, all we have are our metaphors for what we are observing, and that is the same creative process dancers experience as they work to find a way to express an abstract idea in movement," Richard Mural said during the panel discussion. "And when you get it, no one can take the satisfaction of that from you."
Ferocious Beauty: Genome will reprise September 27-29 in Toronto, after which it will tour to Tempe, Arizona.
Lisa Seachrist Chiu
mail@the-scientist.com
Images: From Ferocious Beauty: Genome, taken by Kevin Kennefick.
Clarification (Posted May 5): When originally posted, the article contained incomplete information for upcoming dates in Toronto.
Links within this article:
D. Secko, "Computing gene regulation," The Scientist, June 21, 2004.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/14772
Ferocious Beauty: Genome
http://www.danceexchange.org/performance/ferociousbeautygenome.html
VK McElheny, "The human genome project + 5," The Scientist, February 2006.
http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/2/1/42/1
Manju Hingorani
http://www.wesleyan.edu/molbiophys/Faculty/Hingorani/hingorani.cv.htm
N. Atkinson, "The reduction of seduction," The Scientist, September 1, 2006.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/24522/
K. Hopkin, "How bacteria talk," The Scientist, June 2006.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23546/
Nancy Wexler
http://www.hdfoundation.org/bios/nancyw.php
J. Perkel, "Osteogenesis imperfecta gene identified," The Scientist, October 19, 2006.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/25107/
Irene Eckstrand
http://www.nigms.nih.gov/About/Eckstrand.htm
[Comment posted 2007-05-06 20:35:01]
In response to the first comment, the company only lists the following upcoming performances:
Pittsburgh
Toronto
Tempe
Montclair, NJ
Eason, PA
Burlington, VT
It appears that they may have already visited SF at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Thanks!
Alison McCook
News Editor
[Comment posted 2007-05-04 20:28:11]
The Event was courtesy of Center for Indic Studies as part of its anniversary activities of the Center.
This was the first and one of a kind opportunity that was created with the support of UMass Dartmouth's Public Service grant, Tufts University College of Citizenship, Center for Engineering Education Outreach, and Springstep (a non-profit private organization in Medford, MA) to express the scientific idea of DNA structure-function through Indian classical dance, Bharatnatyam.
Eleven high school and college girls learned the science of DNA through lectures by Professor Bal Ram Singh of UMass Dartmouth, and have choreographed it into their dance steps with the help of Mrs. Ranjani Saigal, a computer scientist and Bharatnatyam dancer, Mrs. Kausalya Srinivasan, a dance teacher from India. Dr. Steve Cohen of Tufts Education department is involved in assessing the educational value of this approach of teaching and learning science to high school students, particularly girls.
On September 5, 2004 these students had presented their first performance at the Cohen Auditorium of Tufts University, Medford, MA. The performance was very well received. The music was awesome, and the whole program was a great success.
Since both Science and Art were being presented in a ground-breaking partnership to bring not only entertainment but also a sense of scientific truth, it was of quite interest to students as well as public.
The story about this project was on the Boston Globe.
LINK
The performance and the ideas receieved quite a bit of publicity and inquiries. Students (Asian American Student Association and Trinity Chemical Society) at Trinity college in Hartford organized a performance, which was even covered by the NPR that can be accessed at LINK
An educational material is being produced out of that performance, but an original recording of the whole program, including the introduction of the idea can be seen at: LINK
Details of the program: Dancing Natureￂﾒs Art
Dancing Natureￂﾒs Art is an attempt to use Bharatanatyam, an ancient Indian Classical dance form that dates back to almost 200 BC as an educational tool to teach complex scientific concepts that came to light only a few decades ago.
It is a first of a kind experiment where students, ranging from ages 14 -19 who have knowledge of this dance form learned the concepts behind DNA, which forms the basis for life. They worked under the guidance of expert choreographers, and their science professor to create this production. This is set to original music that was specially created for them by leading musicians. The students have worked very hard to understand the subject matter, choreograph, rehearse and put the presentation together.
The process has helped the students get an in-depth understanding of the concept of DNA. It has given them experience in team building and initiated them into to a new world where the boundaries between arts and science blur. We hope this experiment will open new avenues for interdisciplinary studies.
Scene 1: Prayer, Origin of Life and the Dance of the Nucleotides.
Scene 2: Evolution, Food Chain, Predators and Prey
Scene 3: Discovery of the Double Helix ￂﾖ Story of Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, James Watson and Francis Crick
Scene 4: DNA Structure
Scene 5: Replication, Transcription and Translation
Scene 6: Mutation, Genetic Disorders ￂﾖ Night Blindness, Hemophilia and Down Syndrome
Scene 7: Cloning and Stem Cell Research
Scene 8: Inherited Traits
Scene 9: Concluding Prayer
For any further information, readers may contact
Dr. Bal Ram Singh, Director, phone ￂﾖ 508-999-8588; Fax: 508-999-8451; email: bsingh@umassd.edu
[Comment posted 2007-05-04 18:57:58]