Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time

by Natalie Hodges

Of course the dancers don’t dance at a distance, and the jury is still out on whether entanglement can be extrapolated from the quantum physical to the human and biological, but you can’t escape the feeling that there must exist some kind of instantaneous, unconscious connection between improvising partners. Entanglement theory holds that before the particles are polarized, whether they will take on a vertical or horizontal polarization is equally probable. In other words, until the moment that one of them passes through the filters, the entangled pair’s polarization is simultaneously vertical and horizontal, the way Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive until you open the box. The instant one of them passes through the filter, its polarization changes; and the other changes with it, as though it always knew in which direction its partner was destined to vibrate.