11 July and 26 July

Aperiodic patterns are not quite random but never quite repeat either. They have cropped up in art, maths and science for centuries. They have been found in the tiling on ancient Muslim temples and the crystalline microstructure of a meteorite, and they have been explored by intellectual greats from Johannes Kepler to Hao Wang and Roger Penrose.

Here we take our audience across the world and through the ages – from the world of shapes, sums and mathematical abstraction to the lab with experiments and simulations of quasicrystals – to feast your eyes, ears and mind on beautiful ideas using ballet, breakdancing and the pretty fractal patterns of Hofstadter’s butterfly.  Think Misty Copeland meets Beat Street, Penrose, graphene and gorgeous ancient middle eastern tiling.

There will also be a workshop before the performance (5:30pm-6:30pm) for those who would like to try a ballet and breakdancing approach to maths and physics for themselves – all ages and levels of expertise welcome.

Before each performance Sean Dewar, a research fellow in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol will be opening the performance with a 15 minute whirlwind tour of some of the mathematical ideas that feed into it.

The Trinity Centre in Bristol Thursday 11th July

workshop at 5:30-6:30pm; no charge
performance 7-8pm; no charge
Prior booking recommended: Headfirst Bristol