[Forwarded to [email removed], came to traveller-request alone --
James]
I was recently at a modern dance performance and ended up in a discussion with
a dancer ( my wife, the one who drags me to these things) about zero-G dance.
We decided the arena (theatre?) would consist of two flattened bowls, one
'above' and one 'below' the dance area. The audience would be arrayed around
3/4 or 1/2 of the circle formed and would have normal gravity.
A performance would have changes in the grav level during or between pieces,
so the performance could easily take place in any gravity environment. We
thought there should be a pole (or poles) in the center (or around) for the
no-grav portions or it would be a series of 'launches' and 'landings'...
probably pretty boring after a while (then again, this is dance).
The high points would be acrobatic turns and twists, and interaction of two
dancers, using each others' bodies as their 'reaction mass'. Obviously if
one dancer pushes off from another the other also travels at an equal speed
in the opposite direction, unless the second dancer already had a vector of
travel.
A last thing to point out is that even the least acrobatic forms of this art
would be dangerous. If your (burly, high mass) dancer slings you the wrong
way, or you cannot catch the 'bounce bar' just right you could go slamming
into the wall with quite a bit of force, breaking ankles, knees, skulls etc
I could even see a scenario where a dancer is killed in the 'stage' by a rival.
btw all these zero-G uses are great, but why are we limiting the concept to
the center of a space habitat? It seems like, after TL10 or so, gravity
controls are cheap enough for performacne use, sports, public entertainment,
and even private use. It would also find many industrial uses.
I am still working on the Habitat I mentioned a few weeks ago. I may write
some details soon for comment.