Inside the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, the particle accelerator where scientists have studied the dance of the building blocks of all matter, another dance has taken place -- and has been turned into a film.
"Symmetry" is a sci-fi dance opera filmed partly inside CERN, the European nuclear research facility near Geneva, using multimedia to explore the philosophical elements of the giant particle accelerator and the search for the fundamental particles that create our universe.
In the film written and directed by Ruben van Leer, a CERN physicist played by Netherlands-based choreographer Lukas Timulak is engaged in a search, using the LHC, for the universe's tiniest particle, when he is visited by a ghostly apparition and an inner voice, played by American soprano Claron McFadden.
She asks the physicist what he loves most -- particles or people.
As the film progresses, the question becomes ever more central, and she takes him from the world of physics to the world of life, music and love.
While he searches for a unifying scientific theory, her voice takes him into an alternate universe, a "landscape of endless possibilities."
The film moves from the technical, claustrophobic backdrop of the Large Hadron Collider to the open world, with segments filmed at the largest salt flat in the world, Bolivia's Salar de Uniyi, in a collision of science and art, melding music with particle physics, from the universally large to the fundamentally small.
The metaphysical contrast between the constricted environment of the LHC and pure, open space of the Bolivian plain is the physicist's inner world, where he must consider which is more important, the search for scientific knowledge or the chance at finding infinite love.
"I didn't want to make a documentary to explain or understand modern physics in general, but rather interpret the complex material this institution is presenting," van Leer said.
Instead, he said, the fusion of opera, choreography, physics and digital art is meant to be an existential story addressing human curiosity, and the questions we all ask ourselves -- where do we come from, why are we here and where are we going?
"And this is also what for me an opera film could do," van Leer said; "give space for the audience to make up their own story, with their own imagination and make a journey like [the main character] within themselves: a tiny, personal, world changing quantum-story."
The film will be shown at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam on March 14 during the Cinedans film festival (a festival dedicated to dance on film) and at the NewScientist CERN festival also to be held in the city.
