`Only the magic and the dream are true’.
Willem Mes
There is an eternal fight in the brain of someone who is both an artist and a scientist.
Science are arts are very distinct and do not replace each other. However they share one common point: they are both an unbearable need for communication.
Art is the desperate need to put what is inside of us, outside. The unbearable need to put it out, and communicate to the exterior. Expression.
Science is the desperate need to hear what the exterior is saying to us. The unbearable need to feel connected to the exterior, and have it *communicate* to us, listen to what it is saying. To listen.
But ultimately both the scientist and the artist just want one and the same thing: to communicate.
Art is expression, and science is listening.
Two channels: in and out of ourselves.
Although I now move between science and adventuring, ballet was my life from very early on. I’d train 5-6 hours/day at the Arts Conservatory (Lisbon) and at 19 moved to Amsterdam to be a professional ballet dancer. At 25 I was halted by injury and was able to focus on astrophysics!
Still, dance is present with me daily. My drive comes from the dance environment and the passion for life it instils in us. The posture and grace, paid for with sweat during strenuous years of ballet allow me today to move freely before an intimidating audience, sprinkled with Nobel prizes! The rigorous training gave me a unique knowledge of my body, which allows me to take on the mountains.
Dance is a lifelong legacy and a part of me, and everything I do.
The challenge is to dance this piece at the beach, that genius ballet master Thomas Karlborg, inspired by George Balanchine, gave in class at StaatsBallet Berlin. The exercise starts at 38mins:46secs into the company’s class on World Ballet Day 2021.
I am committed to perform this on March 21st, 2024 to commemorate the arrival of Spring! A very first rough draft is here!
Join me on my Youtube Channel Swan Lake on Everest for further improvements!
On May 20th, 2023, in anticipation of the upcoming Euclid Satellite Launch, on July 1st , I created a simulation of cosmlogical evolution at the beach. We used festival of colours’ paint to simulate the different elements forming the universe, dark matter, dark energy, and the galaxies in the observable universe. The video and imagery are here.
February 2024:
At the moment Marina is interested in merging the concept of system closure, or the global movement of a flock of birds, who have no leader, with the dynamics of a group of performers on stage. The movement of a flock of birds has been studied by Nobel of Physics Giorgio Parisi, from a mechanics of dynamical systems point of view, in his book “In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonder of Complex Systems” (2023). Find a good review here.
In physics we are trying to understand how the dynamics of a system of many elements, analysed from the perspective of the ensemble, differs from the dynamics of a system of many elements analysed from the perspective of the individual element and then added on to make the full group. The famous contrast between top-down studies and bottom-up studies.
More details to follow. If you enjoy movement and science you can join us by contacting here.
