Merritt Moore: Creativity, Dance, & Physics
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Marianna
I’d love to start with your story. What are the unexpected turns your life took to lead you to become who you are today?
Merritt
My childhood was so very carefree. My parents wanted me to be happy with no pressure. I played, did puzzles and I didn’t participate in any activities until I was thirteen. That’s when I started dancing. I started dancing because I wanted to do karate - my mom is a double blackbelt. And my mom said ‘first you need to do six months of ballet, to fix your posture, and then you can start karate.” I got hooked [on dance]. I was a quiet kid, and the music and movement spoke to me - it was so authentic to how I was feeling. What came out of my body...I could express exactly how I felt. I was a bit of a tomboy, and I had a strict teacher who was inspiring in such a tough way. It made me love ballet.
I also always loved math and puzzles as a kid - looking back I give a ton of credit to my parents. My parents would always tell us how smart girls were, and how good girls were at math. My dad would change the ending of fairy tales so the princesses weren’t waiting for the prince. He kept magazines, barbies out of the house. We would play math flashcards and see how many flashcards I could get through in a minute. It was so much fun. Our parents never wanted us to think we had to fit into some ideal [type] prescribed by society.
Marianna
My dad did that! Our games were science-based. I remember when my parents gave me my first microscope and slides, botany books and pressing books for plants, the wooden blocks we played with. Always building things and puzzles. [laughter] So what did your parents say when you fell in love with ballet?
Merritt
When I started to like it, their reaction was ‘oh no. this was a six-month agreement.’ And I told them it was too late, it was my passion. And I started late, at thirteen, so a ton of feedback that I would never make it. I was always the worst one in the room, but I loved it and stayed in the room. I also started physics late, at seventeen, so staying in was out of pure passion.
That’s a huge thing that I’m very grateful for, having been the worst one in the room and staying in the room. I never stayed because I was being praised for doing something well. I think that sometimes happens, kids stay in a field because they’re getting positive reinforcement that they’re doing well but never that they love the action of doing it. I look back on it...now everything I do, you always have to start somewhere. And I’m used to it so I have no problem staying in until I’m more experienced and comes together.
Marianna
Did you have a mantra or something you told yourself when you were behind and feeling discouragement? How did you get through that, and find the drive to keep going?
Merritt
There’s a saying I love: “nothing’s impossible, possible just takes time.” That was a huge one for me. It’s not that it’s impossible, but I needed to put in the time to catch up. People in ballet school had been dancing eight hours a day since they were six. So, ‘how can I maximize every hour, every minute, to catch up?’ I had to find the time to catch up.
Marianna
And how did you do it?
Merritt
Oh, I was crazy! I would brush my teeth balancing on one leg, in lectures I would do my feet exercises underneath the table. I’d do my ab exercises in my chair. Always studying in splits and doing exercises. Reading my quantum physics books on the treadmill. Looking back I would have slept more... [laughter]
Marianna
And how long did you keep this up?
Merritt
I still do! Once it becomes a habit, it makes things happen so I don’t have to work at it. Now it’s natural, I like to read in my splits. I think better when my body is moving.
Marianna
I love that. Do you have any specific habits you’ve built to foster creativity or enter into a creative space?
Merritt
I love the quiet, so keeping my phone off and things like that. When I find myself off my computer and phone, I feel free. If my computer or phone is nearby, I think of the thousand tasks I have to do. I find that my commutes are my zen space for thinking. Also during lectures, that’s when I get most distracted by other ideas. So now I go to public lectures and sit in the back of the room - I don’t know why, but my mind flows and my most creative ideas happen then.
Marianna
Maybe the flow of ideas gets your brain flowing and then you start thinking in your own direction…
Merritt
Yes, I love that, exactly. I also listen to audiobooks. Sometimes when it’s super technical, I’ll let it keep playing and my thoughts will go someplace else. Listening to people talk about creative ideas, your brain starts to go in that pattern.
Marianna
Where do you think ideas come from?
Merritt
One frustration I had after so many years of school, I felt like I was so often taught how to answer a question that was already known. Memorization and regurgitation. I wasn’t taught how to ask really good questions… Einstein has a saying “I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and then five minutes solving it.” I think great ideas come from time spent thinking about a good question. A couple of people practice this spot on. One is Thomas Heatherwick, an architect who always starts with a question. Can a building look like it’s evaporating? Can a building have movement? He asks a question and then creates something no one has thought of. It’s brilliant.
Another is Elon Musk, who spent so much time asking the question ‘these rockets go into space. How can we reuse them?’ I think sometimes ideas come from solving good questions.
Marianna
Working backward, and you would never have gotten there without letting your mind be open and flowing like that. Share a bit about what you’re working on at Harvard ArtLab - exploring AI/machine learning and dance - you’ve been interested in finding ways to help others think more creatively and outside of the box...
Merritt
I’m creatively inspired by this work. Specifically, it started with the documentary AlphaGo, of AI playing Go. The AI was about to spark human creativity and it succeeded, people were learning from the AI in order to be better players. AI can open so many doors. It’s interesting, ArtLab gave me space a week in March. I was really interested in how AI can inspire our creativity. Then I went back to the Ballet, and my dancer friend owned a robot arm. And then I ran into someone working in AI and motion sensors. So it all came together! Two things I feel strongly about - the work as an art form, it’s very honest and true as good art. And academically, I’d like to see this robot arm choreography itself, and inspire new movements from me if we dance together. We’ll be exploring more in the Fall of 2020. I’ll be having more meetings with robotics teams, seeing what’s out there. It’s research and development, exploring the hi-tech and what’s interesting to play with.
Marianna
Early days yet for ArtLab, can’t wait to hear developments in 2020.
Merritt
It’s just beginning. I’m having fun meeting people, it’s so new!
Marianna
How has working at the intersection of physics and dance affected the way you think? Has your thinking in one space affected your thinking in another?
Merritt
There are so many times dance really helped my physics and physics helped my dance. Even just the physics I learned in my first year...dancers haven’t been taught to constantly think about things like Newton’s 3rd law of motion. So if I want to lift my leg up in the air, a lot of dancers will think ‘ok, I need to lift my leg up’ but I’ll think ‘ok I’m going to push down onto the earth, because I’ll get equal and opposite reaction up and the earth is going to help me lift my leg up’. When I leap, I’ve done so many pendulum equations I can imagine where I’ll land based on how high I lift my leg, what velocity I’m going horizontally. All those things have helped my dancing.
Similarly in physics when I did my experiments, I did a Dancer Ph.D. contest, it was meant to be a joke…‘I’m going to create a tango of photons!’ In the lab I produced pairs of photons, it’s called spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The photons were entangled. I was going to do a tango piece, of these two dancers in a lab and I was thinking about it ‘Ok, so the lab is going to be the crystal’, (because what happens is you have light shining into a crystal and it creates pairs of photons) ‘...and then the two photons are going to emerge’. And that got me thinking, at what point are they created? At the beginning of the crystal? In the middle? And it made me think about the experiment because I’d never had to visualize it before. I constantly wrote this formula out, probably 300 times, but visualizing it made me look at the pulse shape of the pub, the Lazer going into it... And I actually solved a problem happening in my experiment, because I was forced to think about it in a visual way.
And now, it’s opened doors. If I was just doing physics, my aim would be just to make publication. And dance is about getting the part or getting promotions. Since I’m in a space that includes both, I get to make up my own milestones. I don’t have to prescribe to other norms. I get to explore the space that isn’t being explored - I don’t have a set milestone over my head that I need to meet.
Marianna
Wow! How have people reacted to your forging ahead on your own path, creating your own space?
Merritt
In the beginning, I was always ‘Merritt, you can’t dance and do physics, it’s impossible. Don’t do it. It’s too risky.’ Even last year. And now, people have realized I’m stubborn. [laughter] And also I’ve been recognized in like the Rebel Girls book and other things...it’s nice, because the weird thing that I’ve been doing, which I’ve been doing regardless of what people say, which has been mainly negative...now I’m getting pats on the back for.
Marianna
Do you have advice for people forging their own paths?
Merritt
First, you have to be appreciative. The benefits of doing physics and dance were that after being in a physics lab for eight hours, an hour in a dance studio was glorious. And after dancing and my toes are bleeding, an hour in the library was glorious. It made me appreciate both so much.
Second, allow yourself time. Some people expect to be amazing at something in the first five minutes, and constantly hop from one thing to another. They don’t allow themselves time. And then when people excel, it sounds like people were overnight successes and prodigies from the start. It takes time.
From personal experience, when the BBC reported “Breaking News: The Physicist Dancer”, like it’s news, and my friends said ‘Merritt, you’ve been doing this for a decade. This is the oldest news out there!’ Nothing is impossible, the possible just takes time.
Marianna
What is creativity to you?
Merritt
Giving the mind freedom to explore space that hasn’t been explored yet. When I want to be creative, I tell myself to be vulnerable and compassionate and to lead with my heart.
Marianna
When you were on BBC Astronauts: Have You Got What It Takes? how was that experience for you creatively and for your personal practice? What did you leave the show with?
Merritt
It was one of those ‘what is going on?’ moments. I’m curious where it will go... I value every experience, it all pays off in the future. At the time, my Ph.D. was due in a month and a half and I went offline for a month to do it. It made me raise the bar for myself so much higher. I was used to working in a lab by myself and a dance studio by myself, and there was a huge camaraderie component. That was big. Having confidence in yourself so you can have confidence in others. I’ll be getting my piloting license in January, and continuing on that track as well.
Marianna
Any final sources of inspiration to share in your creative practice, people, places, books?
Merritt
Definitely Thomas Heatherwick, Elon Musk, Einstein... I love getting inspiration from art galleries, poetry, audiobooks. I rarely listen to a book more than once, but I love biographies. I’d recommend Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Art Of Learning. Storm in a Teacup is also a wonderful book with physics.
Marianna
I love The Art Of Learning! Incredible book, it’s a favorite as well. Thank you for taking the time, Merritt.
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About Merritt Moore:
“Merritt has achieved what some would call ‘the impossible’: a career as a professional ballet dancer and as an academic quantum physicist.” - University of Oxford
Merritt Moore is a public figure in both science and dance. She was recently awarded Forbes 30 under 30, and she was one of the 12 selected candidates to undergo rigorous astronaut selection on BBC Two "Astronauts: Do you have what it takes?" She graduated with cum laude honors in physics from Harvard and graduated with a Ph.D. in Atomic and Laser Physics from the University of Oxford. She also pursued (and continues to pursue) an impressive professional ballet career with the Zurich Ballet, Boston Ballet, English National Ballet, and Norwegian National Ballet.
Merritt urges that the arts and sciences should not be mutually exclusive, and she inspires young women around the world to pursue their dreams. She has been invited to be the featured speaker at the Forbes Women's Summit in NY, panelist for the U.S. Embassy 'Women in STEM' Panel in London, and is featured in the bestseller "Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls".
Merritt works with an incredible team of artists and researchers to bring a powerfully captivating and vulnerable performance on stage through the integration of science and art. Her main performance is a romantically breathtaking and stirring duet with an industrial robot. Continuing the research that Merritt started during her residency at Harvard's new ArtLab, she explores the future of A.I./ machine learning, specifically with dance, and she researches the incredible potential it has to magnify human creativity.
Follow Instagram/Twitter @PhysicsonPointe.