Dance Versus Powerpoint: A Modest Proposal
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988669_10152882434160652_1893030052_nWelcome to another Tuesday with TED. This week we’re watching science writer John Bohannon who suggests that we use dancers instead of powerpoint. In this choreographed talk, he makes his case aided by dancers from Black Label Movement, an explosively physical Minneapolis dance company. They are accompanied byJelloslave, a pair of amazing cellists.

Bohannon is a biologist and journalist. After embedding in southern Afghanistan in 2010, he engineered the first voluntary release of civilian casualty data  by the US-led military coalition. As a visiting scientist at Harvard, he studies the evolution of fame  using data provided by Google. Using an alter ego known as the Gonzo Scientist, he runs the Dance Your Ph.D. contest for the journal Science, an international competition for scientists to explain their research using interpretive dance.

This is a spellbinding and wildly creative talk. Don’t miss it.

As a former technical and scientific writer, I found this TEDTalk both thought-provoking and mind-blowing. Who would have thought you could explain science with dance? And yet, somehow it works. Or at least it did for me. How do you feel about his approach? Did you find it helpful?

Until next time,
Cynthia Patton

About Cynthia J. Patton

Writer, Editor, Advocate, Speaker, Special Needs Attorney, and Autism Mom. Also the Founder and Chairperson of Autism A to Z, a nonprofit providing resources and solutions for life on the spectrum.
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