CQT is a creative partner of the NUS Arts Festival 2016

The NUS Arts Festival this year explores the interplay between science, technology and the arts, with input from the Centre for Quantum Technologies as the festival's creative partner.

CQT's collaboration with NUS Indian Dance is featured in NUS Centre For the Arts' artzone magazine. Download a pdf of the article here.

The Centre for Quantum Technologies is proud to be a Creative Partner of the NUS Arts Festival 2016: WONDER, presented by NUS Centre For the Arts (CFA).

Taking place 11-26 March, the festival will feature more than 30 performances. Public ticket sales open this week on 15 January.

As the programme notes put it: "NUS Arts Festival 2016 takes you to a realm where imagination traverses time and space. From the science of the very small and the boundless dimensions of the universe to our everyday interactions with the world, the theme this year explores the interplay between science, technology and the arts."

Researchers from CQT are collaborating with some of the arts groups performing in the festival, including NUS Indian Dance, NUS Chinese Dance and the Asian Contemporary Ensemble.

Particularly deep is the collaboration with the NUS Indian Dance group through its Resident Choreographer, Santha Bhaskar, a recipient of Singapore's Cultural Medallion. She has been appointed CQT Outreach Fellow while she develops a new Bharatanatyam work inspired by the behaviour of quantum particles. Bharatanatyam is a form of classical Indian dance.

The festival will preview her new choreography Sambhavna in free shows at 8pm on 18 and 19 March. The full work will be staged later in the year.

CFA's artzone magazine has more on this collaboration, including comment from CQT Research Fellow Sai Vinjanampathy. Sai is one of the researchers who has been meeting with Mrs Bhaskar to discuss physics, and he went to watch dancers trying out movements inspired by the possibility of entanglement between quantum particles. He told artzone "The choreography reminds me of some of what I would try to teach in my own lectures – there is a sense of intertwinement and a bit of asymmetry."

Other events taking direct cues from physics include the play now then again by US writer Penny Penniston on 11 and 12 March and the Indonesian film Supernova: The Knight, The Princess & The Shooting Star screening on 12 March.

Sharon Tan, Director, CFA, writes: "Our theme emerged from a reflection that in this day and age when most of our human interactions take place via the screens of mobile devices and computers, our capacity for engaging our senses fully as well as for wonder and imagination might be slowly lost. We then threw the big challenge to our students – how might the study of quantum physics reframe our perspective to reawaken our capacity for wonder? I am pleased that though it was a tough challenge, our artists valiantly rose to the occasion."

Visit the festival website at www.nusartsfestival.com for more details of all the performances.