Valerie Jamieson interviews Mark Baldwin, choreographer at the Rambert Dance Company in London, and Ray Rivers, professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London, about a ballet they are collaborating on to celebrate Einstein, in New Scientist:
What do you think of art-science collaborations in general?
MB: Dreary and boring.
RR: Some of them anyway. They don’t have a good history. I’m not saying they aren’t a good idea. They are often done with good intentions, but it’s just the way some of them have been realised. I remember once seeing people dressed in yellow as quarks. Once in a while, I drive past the hall where I saw them and my heart sinks every time.
MB: There has been a piece of theatre recently aimed at children about tearing holes in space and getting lost in them. I didn’t want to go there. I’m not Dr Who.
How is Constant Speed, your new dance for Rambert, different?
MB: Constant Speed isn’t worthy. It is gorgeous, cheap and nasty, and fabulous.
RR: Right from the beginning we were dead against giving a physics lesson.
More here.