Thursday, November 19, 2020
How Quantum Physicist Ballerina Merritt Moore Learned to Dance With a Robot (Plus, Her Newest Film)
Pointe: When the world went into lockdown last March, most dancers despaired. But not Merritt Moore. The Los Angeles native, who lives in London and has danced with Norwegian National Ballet, English National Ballet and Boston Ballet, holds a PhD in atomic and laser physics from the University of Oxford. A few weeks into the coronavirus pandemic, she came up with a solution for having to train and work alone: robots.
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This is soooo cool!! There is something so eerie and beautiful about the image of Moore posed on top of and intertwined with the robot arm. My immediate thought when thinking about a robot dance partner is how consistent and reliable their movement would be throughout a dance number. However I can see how that rigidity is a double edged sword – the lack of adaptability can make it difficult to dance fluidly with a human that can make mistakes and dance differently every time. I am incredibly impressed with the smoothness of movement in the robot arm. My other thoughts watching this piece is how it sort of strangely enforces and subverts some stereotypes about robots and AI. Obviously this robot lacks autonomy, but it can be hard to separate those two concepts. While this robot is sort of just a technological puppet, it also has a beautiful fluid humanity to it. It’s a little frightening to see a robot be so gorgeous, and yet behind the scenes we know that the robot is not-smart.
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