Cal Poly dance students performed a choreographed dance that reflected San Luis Obispo County temperature data over the past 100 years.
It's a new way of relating data to those with hearing and seeing disabilities called sonification, expressing facts and figures with music and dance.
"You know, we just sort of kept going on our channels. And then this, at the beginning of the spring quarter, we all sort of came together and figured out, all right, what are we going to do? And we settled on the idea of, you know, choreographed performance to a sonification," said Dr. Julia Schedler, Cal Poly Statistics Professor.
The choreographed piece began with seasonal averages and evolved into a dramatic interplay of extreme highs and lows.
The final movement reflected the increasing volatility of climate change through layered melodies and sharp interjections marking every new record-breaking temperature.
The Cal Poly Dance Performance Information:
- Title: Movements of Maximums, Minimums, and Moments : SLO County temperatures 1909-2025
- Directed and Choreographed by: Josh Schneider, Undergraduate Student, Landscape Architecture Department and Theatre Arts Minor, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
- Dancers: Lucy Fossa is a second-year Animal Science major and Dance minor. Amani Arellano is a second-year Theatre Arts major at Cal Poly, with an emphasis on performance
- Music by: Julia Schedler, Assistant Professor, Statistics Department, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
