Dancers to unravel DNA's mysteries

When the adults aren't around, Kopal Patel and her friends improvise jolting dance routines like those seen in Bollywood movies.

Of late, she likes a movie in which the heroine is a girl studying chemistry and the hero is her undisclosed bodyguard. The drama is intertwined with lavish musical numbers that have become a trademark of India's film industry. And for this 15-year-old, who rents the films in her hometown of Burlington, her improvisations are an extension of her training in Indian classical dance since age 6.

That an Indian girl learns to hold her torso like a graceful vase with ornate limbs flashing in movement is as common as Western girls performing a pirouette in ballet class. The difference is that Kopal has always rehearsed to tell a Hindu mythological story.

This year, however, the repertoire has changed. Kopal and 10 other Indian girls are supposed to tell the story of DNA through dance, and Kopal isn't much of a lover of science. "I like French and biology, but I don't like chemistry," she said.

Could a dance break down that resistance? That's the experiment that Kopal's dance instructor is conducting this summer.

For Ranjani Saigal, having her dance students learn the secrets of the double helix molecule, and how it replicates to store all human genome data in every cell, is one task. Conveying that through art and emotion rather than reason is another.

"I think if we could do this, it could become a model for how children can learn about science through other means like dance," Saigal said.

The group will perform a small section of its repertoire next Sunday at Boston's Hatch Shell during Indian independence festivities. The full results will be displayed on Sept. 5, in a two-hour performance at Tufts University.

Saigal, who has been dancing since she was a girl and teaching for 11 years, has gone about her experiment with the austere determination of a scientist. Tufts University, where she is an engineer in the Academic Technology department, has given her $5,000 to start. She has independently raised another $10,000, which she has used to arrange an impressive program for September.

Indian musicians, such as guitarist Prasanna, have composed and recorded music for nine scenes with Western and Indian instruments. An Indian dance teacher who won a Fulbright scholarship at Bridgewater State College is directing the production, while an engineering professor from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth will elaborate on DNA theory to the young dancers this month. And the girls' mothers are driving, fixing lunches, and observing from the corner of the studio in Medford's Springstep Center as the dancers rehearse.

"Everything was controlled," said Saigal. "The only uncontrollable variable is the girls."

The girls range in age from 15 to 19 and include a Tufts pre-med student, Saigal's daughter, who came up with the basic idea, and high school students with varying degrees of interest in science. Unlike most other dance routines they have been involved in, they are choreographers to some extent in this production. They are supposed to absorb the meaning of DNA, the way they would have learned it in school. But instead of an exam, they must express the concept the way they would a Hindi myth, or in a Bollywood production.

The girls have spent weeks warming up with other routines and researching the DNA theory. The choreography has barely started. Their initial efforts have tried to represent the replication of the DNA molecule.

At a recent rehearsal, several instruments played the same rhythm, with a pair of dancers matched to each instrument. At one point, the dancers lined up, connected to each other by crossed arms representing the DNA helix.

Saigal, who years ago transformed her basement into a dance studio, said the final dance will use the storytelling aids of classical Indian dance, as well as modern multimedia techniques.

"In Bharatanatyam style, the hand gestures talk about what we are doing. And a sutra dhar, a narrator . . . kind of binds the story together. We are also going to have multimedia props with Power Point presentations, and [photos] of a double helix on side screens," she said. "I thought about it a lot."

When she approached her colleagues at Tufts with the idea, it was well received and the College of Citizenship and Public Service awarded the $5,000 grant.

"If it does work, it could become useful for Tufts' own research into alternative ways of teaching," said Steven Cohen of the Academic Technology Department, which focuses on improving student learning through technology. "We will use it to try to figure out whether a course like this can be developed, maybe there will be other ways to teach complex ideas."

Nivedita Gunturi, a 19-year-old Texan who stayed at Tufts this summer to take the dance camp and a chemistry class, believes this approach can be fruitful. "I think it's fascinating to do something scientific with dance," said the pre-med student. "It kind of blurs the line between science and arts."

Angelica Medaglia can be reached at medaglia@globe.com.