Extreme mathematics or the art of fire dancing
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I can still remember images of a dancer, dressed in typical bright and colorful Moroccan attire, skillfully balancing a tray of candles on her head while gracefully performing on the stage of a restaurant in Marrakesh. Her smooth and composed moves were less surcharged than those of a belly dancer. She slowly moved to a tempo that was dictated by the sound of a bendir accompanied by the oriental melodies of a ney. While the flickering lights of the candles conferred some drama to the choreography, the spectators seemed to be mesmerised by the elegance of the performer’s agility and balance. I have, since then, been exposed to many “tea tray” or siniya performances but never have I seen another candle dance in Morocco.
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending another type of fire performance. Although this one was more modern, off-beat and certainly more perilous, I felt somewhat the same enchantment and admiration that had seized me at the candle dancing show. The event took place in our backyard and 20 or so people attended the party/show where Ian, Veronica and Judy took turns in spinning fire staff and poi.
I have always thought that we, as humans, were mostly fascinated by the uncommon things that happen in our life. We gradually lose interest and stop seeing the beauty when the routine settles in and the mundane replaces the exceptional. From this premise, I was blindly drawn to conclude that what had amazed me in fire dancing, was the uncommon nature of the spectacle. However, after some serious reflexion, I was able to understand the true beauty of fire spinning through an extrapolation of mathematical concepts to a field that at first sight had nothing to do with science. That evening, I saw shapes filling up a geometrical plane which, for one night, was taking place in quantum world, instead of on a blank piece of paper. The air was filled with logarithmic spirals, spheres, knots and many other figures. Symmetry, angles and curves were genuinely choreographed to match the background music that served as a nonlinear coordinate system where the performers freely drew their moves. The body symbolically represented the mathematician’s hand and fire his pencil.
That night was my first introduction to extreme mathematics, to shapes in motion and to the beautiful art of fire spinning. I have never been so confident that “Playing with fire” could be so beautiful.
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August 15th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
veronica_1.jpg and ian_2.jpg are from Yannick at ygingras.net who shares the pictures under creative common share alike.