The academic world can certainly throw out some curiosities. The University’s latest seminar series – Arts-Science Encounters – raises a few eyebrows with its promises of delivering “the science and poetry of magnetic resonance imaging”, for example. One might expect the attempt to sex up the text book to come off awkwardly.
Our professors do have a sense of humour however, and while keeping tongue firmly in cheek, they also succeed in making us think. A professor of comparative psychology at Cambridge, Nicky Clayton explains how her double life as an academic and a professional dance instructor (tango and salsa) have come crashing together. After meeting Mark Baldwin, the artistic director of the Rambert Dance Company, she found herself brought on as a consultant for a very special performance to commemorate the life and work of Charles Darwin through contemporary dance.
Over the next half-hour Nicky presents us with a series of video-clips demonstrating the startling behaviour of her research subjects – fiendishly clever birds. It was a surprise to me to learn that crows are grouped just behind apes and dolphins as the most intelligent creatures in the animal kingdom.
Nicky demonstrated how these birds learn to work in tandem, use tools, and have been proven to have a concept of past and future that allows them to reason. She then showed us the mating rituals of the Hummingbirds, Blue Manakins and the Bird of Paradise, who use dance to attract potential mates. The Bird of Paradise steals the show, throwing away twigs to clear a dancing circle on the forest floor and performing a pre-dance mime before it deploys its evolutionary weapon – a comical inflatable ‘tutu’, which it struts around the floor – only to be driven from the stage by a more experienced male who doubles his crowd of admiring females.
It is three principles of the natural world – how it hides and reveals itself to its advantage, how individuals vary because they are both similar and yet different, and how the future becomes the past – that inspire the movement and choreography of the Rambert Dance Company’s upcoming show. At the centre of its story is how these factors allow females to be picky about their partners, resulting in increasingly exaggerated and extraordinary displays – a real comedy of change. The clips we saw of the performance certainly look intriguing, and no doubt we’ll be bringing you a review in the next issue.