The Similarities Between Ballet and Math
Science fiction writer Catherine Asaro is also a ballet dancer and a math teacher who believes thatphysics and dancing are much more closely related than you might think
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Science fiction writer Catherine Asaro is also a ballet dancer and a math teacher who believes that physics and dancing are much more closely related than you might think. Both are about spatial perception, and “ballet is very much about algorithms and patterns, and numerics,” says Asaro. “Everything we do in an exercise, for example at the bar, is an algorithm. And you learn them, they become incorporated in our body.” And then there’s the classical music connection. “We’ve known for a long time that many mathematically oriented people are also very musical,” says Asaro. “And even Bach, there have been whole analysis of the mathematics of his music; you get that in dance, too.”
In her Big Think interview, Asaro also talks about the challenges of excelling in both arts and sciences. One of the benefits to being a genius of both the left and right brain, she says, is that “When I think about math it gives me an idea for the writing and when I think about the writing I go ‘Wait a minute, that gave me an idea how to solve a problem that I was working on in the physics or the math.’ As to how that happens or why I couldn’t tell you.”
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