Can we communicate deep and beautiful ideas about Nature through dancing, and can it be infectious and joyful? The answer is written below in these pictures taken at The Imperial Festival in May 2023.

We decided to share how much of the colour in the world has its origins in the oscillations of atoms and molecules. They are like tiny musical instruments, but instead of emitting notes of sound, they emit notes of colour. Each atom has its own unique set of colours which it loves to absorb and emit. When arranged against the full rainbow spectrum of light these colour notes look like a beautiful barcode, like the neon spectrum shown here.

In the workshop, participants view these beautiful atomic spectra through hand-held spectroscopes and then don headphones to hear from physicists how they are formed. Then contemporary dance artists show everyone how to become hydrogen atoms absorbing and emitting mellow red, swinging green or hummingbird high frequency blue light*.

After the introductions to atomic physics and contemporary dance, everyone is released to choose their light colours and dance. The floor fills with dancers, their headphones glowing red, green or blue, signalling their music choices.

The images above are of guests at our first event at the Imperial Late in November 2022, where we hosted three sessions of 40 people each. At the Imperial Festival in May 2023, we welcomed around 400 guests and shown below are their answers to the question, ‘How does it feel to be a dancing atom?’.

Read more about the event at Imperial’s Festival in this beautiful article by Angie Lo.

If you’d like to experiment at home, the soundtracks to the colours are on Spotify here: Red, Green, Blue

Thank You

November 2022: Imperial Public Engagement Team and the Lates support folks, Imperial’s Centre for Cold Matter, Imperial physicists Rhys Jenkins, Stefan Popa, Bryony Lanigan and Isabel Rabey, and dance artists Emma Bellerby and Yanaëlle Thiran.

May 2023: Imperial Public Engagement Team and the remarkable Festival support staff, Imperial’s Centre for Cold Matter, scientists - Bryony Lanigan, Billy Flanaghan, Kyle Major, Kai Voges, Elizabeth Pasatembou, Alice Josset, Angie Lo, Shanti Pisa, and dance artist Emma Bellerby.

Event photography © Brendan Foster and Dan Weill.

*Hydrogen atoms actually emit red, greeny-blue and bluey-purple light, but we used red, green and blue for simplicity.