Emily Coates is associate professor in the theater studies program at Yale University, where she created the dance studies curriculum. Sarah Demers is Horace D. Taft Associate Professor of Physics at Yale University. Their work has been featured in the World Science Festival and covered in the New York Times and the New Yorker.
A unique study -Nature After reading this book, you will never again think of dance without the physics that enables it, and you will never again think of physics without the art that can express it. -Neil deGrasse Tyson Physics and Dance will be of interest to dancers, scientists, and a general public who wish to understand an ongoing relationship between the two. -Twyla Tharp This fascinating book blends physics depth and dance details with a seemingly impossible grace. -Daniel Whiteson, author of We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe Each [uses] her discipline to shed light on the other's. . . . While science tends to be viewed as more serious than dance, their approach revolves around collapsing hierarchies, giving equal weight to both. -Siobhan Burke, New York Times review of Emily Coates's 2017 performance Incarnations, based in part on their collaboration Dancer and choreographer Coates and physicist Demers have created a brilliant exercise that is both challenging and rewarding. As a dancer I had never thought of myself as a small mass in relation to a larger one, namely, planet Earth, at least not in those terms. Part of the fun for the reader lies in figuring out, from page to page, which voice is speaking; both are erudite, meticulous, and convincing. -Yvonne Rainer