The mathematician Professor Dr Barbara Rüdiger, together with the Pina Bausch dancer and choreographer Jean Laurent Sasportes and the filmmaker and photographer Ralf Silberkuhl, conceived a dance theatre project in the Immanuelskirche. In it, the well-known Boltzmann equation in mathematics is realised through dance and video. Entitled "In the beginning was chaos", the production celebrated an acclaimed premiere in January 2018.

"You have to be brave," she says, and talks enthusiastically about her first dance theatre project, which she realised alongside her work as a stochastics researcher at the school of mathematics and natural sciences at the university of Wuppertal.

When asked when she last danced herself, the Italian-German scientist ponders; but her approach was different.

The story that led to the performance of her project "In the beginning was chaos" in Wuppertal's Immanuelskirche is no less exciting.

It all began when student Barbara Rüdiger from the University of Tor Vergata in Rome attended a doctoral school. The best-known European Boltzmann experts** were invited there and she was able to take part in international discussions. After moving to Germany, she was soon offered a junior professorship in Koblenz. And once again the subject of Boltzmann caught up with her. She says: "When I was in Koblenz, we junior professors decided to give a lecture together on a specific topic. The junior professors were theologians, Germanists, computer scientists and media scientists. The theologian suggested the topic 'Die Zeit'. And then the whole discussion about the irreversibility of time, which Boltzmann formulated as a mathematician, physicist and philosopher, came back to my mind. In her lecture there, she presented Boltzmann's theory, which she explained in such a simplified way that colleagues from outside the field could understand it. Today, the Boltzmann equation is one of her favourite basic research topics.

"That's how it started," says the scientist, who then applied for a professorship in Wuppertal and has headed the stochastics working group here since 2009.

Can you predict a lottery win?

Stochastics means "the art of guessing" and Rüdiger can also predict a lottery win. "I can say what the probability of winning is if you bet on a certain number. It's just a matter of calculating all the possibilities. I can also say that if you play the same number over and over again, you will win in a finite amount of time. The problem with this is that it could take a very long time and the children or grandchildren might have to be instructed to keep playing the number. And then someone will definitely win."

In Wuppertal, she soon gave a lecture as part of an event organised by the Friends and Alumni of the University of Wuppertal (FABU), for which she used excerpts from a Pina Bausch documentary film as an explanatory tool to illustrate the dynamics in the equation. She tirelessly championed the achievements of the scientist Boltzmann, whose theory was controversially discussed or even rejected in specialist circles at the time and is still not satisfactorily known in general education today.

In a roundabout way, she finally met fellow campaigners who helped her to realise her project creatively. With Jean Laurent Sasportes, a choreographer and Pina Bausch dancer, and
filmmaker and photographer Ralf Silberkuhl, a team was formed that worked together on the realisation.

The Boltzmann equation

What is the Boltzmann equation actually about? Put simply, the equation describes how molecules are distributed in the event of changes in location and speed when a gas expands in a vacuum.

In order to understand this, the mathematician had to have many conversations with the choreographer, filmmaker and dancers. The structures kept changing, but at some point the point came where everyone was working in the same direction. "And then," she says, "the project was in the hands of the choreographer and the digital camera, and I became more of an observer and commentator."

A team is created with the involvement of students

Originally, the project was only planned with two dancers for financial reasons. But more performers are needed to transform molecules into images. And so two more dancers and around 20 extras were added, some of whom even had previous theatre and dance experience. Students were also able to take part in this project. Rüdiger involved them by organising a voluntary seminar in advance. "I wanted it to be voluntary, I didn't want it to be linked to certificates. Then I would have lost my fun and that wouldn't have been good," she says.


(final applause)

Thanks to the contribution of a student in the "box scene" of the piece, the choreographer was able to develop the situation more effectively.
Another student also investigated the historical background, and another student translated much of it into English. In this way, she directly involved students in a transfer project - similar to a service learning programme - and thus also broke new ground in teaching.

Inthe beginning, there was chaos

(molecules in space)

On the premiere evening, this resulted in danced contrasts, the same movement sequences of different performers, a play scene that develops into a backwards dismantling phase after a short forward build-up phase, or twitching molecules that illuminate the dark church room as well as faded-in formulas, life dates or passions - Boltzmann was a butterfly collector - that supported the atmosphere.

The enthusiasm for both performances was huge. The project manager commented: "There was long-lasting applause and I received many emails asking me to continue the project. The need to combine art and science in such performances and perhaps also make them accessible to schools was frequently expressed. I was very pleased about that."

Following the successful premiere, new plans are of course already in the pipeline. For example, a project in the field of financial mathematics would be conceivable, which could be visualised very well.

Summing up, Professor Rüdiger says: "I think there are many more points of contact between art and science than you might imagine. However, you always need funding, especially to start a new project. It's a big struggle and you have to be brave."

Anyone who can combine maths and dance is already very brave.

Uwe Blass (interview from 16/01/2018)

**Explanation: Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann, 1844 - 1906 was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. He taught at the universities of Vienna, Graz, Munich and Leipzig. His most important achievements were in the field of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.
 

Prof Dr Barbara Rüdiger studied mathematics at the Universities of La Sapienza and Tor Vergata in Rome. In Germany, she initially worked with various scholarships under Prof Dr Sergio Albeverio in Bochum and Bonn. She was then awarded a junior professorship at the University of Koblenz-Landau, from where she applied for a full professorship in Wuppertal. Here, she has been head of the Stochastics section in the school of mathematics and natural sciences since 2009.