Before their tour of Mexico, Gilles Jobin and his company of dancers did a full live rehearsal of his latest piece Spider Galaxies –in an unusual setting. Namely – the CERN main restaurant. For the afternoon of Tuesday 31 July 2012, the CERN restaurant was transformed into a dance studio, watched by physicists and many of the summer students who come to CERN.

This was Gilles Jobin’s Intervention No 2 as Collide@CERN choreographer in residence – with the intention of exposing physicists to the sheer physicality and artistry of movement and contemporary dance – as well as showing them a different use of one of there most familiar everyday spaces.

Here are some of the reactions of those watching:
'The quality was amazing - both the choreography and the dancers. It was just incredible to have that quality here at CERN, and I felt so lucky to be there.'
'I enjoyed the live rehearsal yesterday – really got me thinking about movement and space (locally and further afield) and the power of a performer’s gaze.'
'I loved seeing how the dancers interacted in a smooth and precise way, as if they were interlocking pieces. It was really beautiful. I had never seen such good use of laser pointers in a physics presentation! It was really beautiful and surprising.'
The score features sounds generated by data from the LHC, including buried within it, a sonic representation of the Higgs like particle.

Gilles describes Spider Galaxies in this way:
“On stage, the bodies unwind their movements up to their point of exhaustion. Steps are alternately quick and short, always flowing. We almost feel they are taming us, disclosing some secret scores. The body turns into matter which is complete, spatial and sensual… Infinitely large or infinitesimal, such are the Spider Galaxies...”