So what it is about? This is often a dreaded question regardless of whether it concerns your thesis, you new book, or suggestions and ideas to change your company. Many ideas are difficult to put into words. We may know very well what it is all about, yet explaining things is not always that easy. Scientific ideas are never easy to explain to non-scientists.Yet the same is often true of other ideas and suggestions. The competition Dance your Ph.D. Thesis challenges scientists to explain their research through interpretative dance. A wide range of dance styles is used such as ballet, break dancing, and flaming hula-hoops. Below is a selection of videos with entries to the competition.
Shifting the medium we use to explain something may not only make it easier for others to understand the idea – it may also increase our awareness of the idea. So how do you turn your thesis or suggestion into a dance? Changing the medium that we use to represent something, challenges us to search for the essence to the idea. We have to Think Dive deep and pull out the core concepts of the idea. Extracting concepts from an idea is hard especially if the suggestion or research is abstract. Your idea may be all about maths and figures. So you need to find a way to explain the idea with an example. You also need to become the dance and use your body to communicate the idea.
Children often think by using their body and instead of focusing on costumes, the idea is to explore dance as a medium. Dance is a non-verbal way of communicating. A photographer expresses his or her thoughts by suing the camera, and a painter uses painter. Exploring and expressing ideas by using both verbal and non-verbal communication is not only fun by also a way to Think Dive into different seas. Each sea teaches us different things and new insight may be gained.
Photo: “Breakdance” by graur codrin
