Dancing Without Weight

DanceHere | Aug 11, 2008 | 0

Kathleen McDonagh dancing, Jeanne Robinson looking on (Photo by James Sposto)

What is the greatest challenge facing you as a dancer?

"Gravity", Jeanne Robinson might say. This former dancer and teacher--now a writer and choreographer--has explored the idea of weightless dance for decades. And she is one of the few people who have actually performed in the zero-gravity environment high above ordinary stages.

The Stardance Experience

The Stardance Vision Team is Jeanne's group, a union of dancers, artists, filmmakers, composers, and designers. Backed by pioneers in the field of space travel and tourism, the Stardance Vision Team wants to take the art of dance outside Earth's atmosphere, where they might explore an entirely new set of possibilities for choreography and expression in dance.

Jeanne first devoted herself to the idea of zero-gravity dance when, in the 1970s, her husband requested help on a book he was writing. Jeanne's husband, science fiction writer Spider Robinson, was working on a new novel, Stardance. In this work, he featured a dancer who performed in space. And he needed his wife--the dancer--to create "zero-gravity" choreography that would allow him to speak accurately about dance in his novel. Jeanne, a contemporary dancer, leaped at the opportunity to create movement for such a unique environment. The idea of zero-gravity dance enthralled her.

Doubtless, every dancer has imagined weightlessness, and most dancers would probably wish for the ability to defy gravity. But, not many dancers actually have that wish granted. Jeanne, however, did.

More than 30 years after the publication of Stardance, Peter Diamandis, CEO and co-founder of the ZERO-G space tourism company, learned of Jeanne's ideas for weightless dance. And, he offered her the chance of a lifetime.

Diamandis gave Jeanne two seats aboard the G-Force-One, ZERO-G's modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft that allows for weightless flights. (You can read more about ZERO-G and space tourism at this link.)

Jeanne was ready for this opportunity. In the 1980s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had offered Jeanne a spot in the "Civilian In Space" program. She was supposed to ride a shuttle into space and dance in zero-gravity. But, this opportunity disappeared. When the Challenger shuttle exploded on take-off, carrying Christa McAuliffe, a teacher and the first person to participate in NASA's "Civilian In Space" program, NASA canceled the plans. Jeanne would not dance in space.

But decades later, the opportunity had returned.

For her zero-gravity debut on December 30, 2007, Jeanne chose Kathleen McDonagh as her partner. Kathleen is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

During her 90-minute flight--which permitted fifteen 20-second intervals of weightlessness--Jeanne may have developed more ideas for choreography and movement expression than she had in all her decades of faithful dance work on the earth.

One of her findings: it wasn't until her experience in zero-gravity that Jeanne fully appreciated how much energy a dancer spends on fighting gravity.

"In space, the necessary antagonist becomes not gravity, but inertia of motion: the body's tendency to keep on doing whatever it was doing a moment ago," Jeanne wrote in the March/April 2008 edition of Dance Central, the members' newsletter of Vancouver's Dance Centre.

"Moving your body can have some effect--but not as much as you might think: air just isn't thick enough to swim in. But you can shift your mass around your center...Move both arms to the right, the rest of you moves to the left, and so on. It's eerily beautiful to watch."

You can read Jeanne's account of her experiences with zero-gravity dance at this link.

For now, trips aboard G-Force-One are far too expensive for any dancer to consider regular lessons in a weightless movement. But Jeanne and Kathleen hope to share their unique adventure with a world of dancers, artists, and advocates of scientific exploration through their film The Stardance Experience.

The Stardance Experience, a collaborative effort between Jeanne and several filmmakers, including James Sposto, will explore the importance of human creativity and spirituality and the possibilities for art that exist in the greater universe, outside the gravity of our planet's atmosphere.

The Stardance Experience, captured in "Large Format" originally developed by the IMAX Corporation, will combine Jeanne and Kathleen's actual "stardancing" experience with a fictional back-story about a dancer's attempt to expand her art beyond the limits of this world.

For photos of stardancing and for more information on Jeanne and the efforts of the Stardance Vision Team, visit this link to the original version of this article on DanceHere . There, you'll also find our sources.

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