PROGRAM
Trust Fall (2008) -
Andrea mazzariello
fivebyfive
Quiet/loud (2025) - Amy Nam
fivebyfive
Missy Pfohl Smith, choreographer (in collaboration with the dancers)
W. Michelle Harris, digital media artist
BIODANCE - Biviana Beckaroo, Sarah Johnson, Donetta Tchoroleev
WORLD PREMIERE
Branches (2025) - Steve Danyew
fivebyfive
Ripp Greatbatch, choreographer (in collaboration with the dancers)
Aida Baserehkasmaei, Yukiko Yamamoto, Ripp Greatbatch, dancers
Marc Webster, narrator
WORLD PREMIERE
Constant (2011) -
julia seeholzer
fivebyfive
playing dice with the
universe (2025) -
sean william calhoun
fivebyfive
Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp, choreographer (in collaboration with the dancers) and costumes
W. Michelle Harris, digital media artist
Amya Brice, Ella Genovese, Rachel Greene, Elyssia Primus, Claire Spenard, dancers
WORLD PREMIERE
Bifurcaciones (bifurcations) (2025) -
Felipe Pérez Santiago
fivebyfive
Mariah Steele, choreographer (in collaboration with the dancers)
Dance title: Entanglement
Ripp Greatbatch and Hans Rinderknecht, dancers
WORLD PREMIERE
origins of
subatomic mysteries
The UN-proclaimed International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ) is the year 2025. The year was chosen to mark the 100th anniversary of the development of quantum mechanics, highlighting a century of progress and the transformative potential of quantum science. “Subatomic Mysteries” is the celebration of this anniversary.
The origins for tonight’s program started when Laura Lentz, flutist and Artistic Director of fivebyfive met with Missy Pfohl Smith, Director of the Program of Dance and Movement at the University of Rochester, and Antonino di Piazza, University of Rochester Professor of Physics and Distinguished Scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics.
The idea was to collaborate on new music commissioned and written for fivebyfive by composers Sean William Calhoun, Steve Danyew, Amy Nam, and Felipe Pérez Santiago who would create music in response to concepts of quantum mechanics, and to have new choreography for each of the works created in response to the music by faculty in the Program of Dance and Movement. What you will witness tonight are the premieres of these collaborative works, some of which also include the work of W. Michelle Harris, media artist and Professor of Games and Interactive Games and Technology at Rochester Institute of Technology. Two pieces performed by fivebyfive alone offer reflective points in the program—Trust Fall echoing the unpredictability of quantum outcomes, and Constant suggesting the patterns that still hold within that uncertainty.
As we celebrate 100 years of quantum science and technology, Subatomic Mysteries invites us to reflect with awe and wonder on discoveries that not only shape our understanding of the universe, but also illuminate the profound ways we are connected.
PROGRAM NOTEs
Trust Fall (2008) -
Andrea mazzariello
Trust Fall was written in 2008, after a long time away from composing concert music. I wanted to…make it about what I could really hear as opposed to creating material that felt out of reach or somehow unearned. The initial idea was to improvise at the piano, record the little discoveries I’d make into a software sequencer, then transcribe it all to make a score. The transcription part of the process, though, became something more akin to transformation of the material, and I started to appreciate anew the power of going to the page, the potential of that specific kind of canvas. I see the various metric modulations and changes in feel as requiring leaps of faith on the part of the performers, hence the title. It also refers to the hope that a sad summer would get better, telling myself to Trust the Fall.
— Andrea Mazzariello
“This piece’s uncertainty offers a reflection point in the program to reflect on how, like in quantum physics, we often can’t predict outcomes with certainty.”
— Laura Lentz
Quiet/loud (2025) - Amy Nam
Upon first glance, the subatomic world seems wild with chaos. Wave functions governing the energy and potential of quantum states combine and separate in polyrhythmic interference. Electrons flicker between atomic orbitals without bothering to traverse the space in between. Ever-present environmental entropy rudely interferes with particles that are somehow occupying multiple places simultaneously.
Upon first glance, the subatomic world seems chaotic... And yet—it's not quite. The behavior of subatomic particles is governed by the laws of wave dynamics. Although appearing chaotic at first, subatomic particles actually behave with regularity.
QUIET (Quantum Underground Instrumentation Experimental Testbed) and LOUD are the names of a pair of labs at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, the United States' premier particle accelerator lab, located in Batavia, Illinois. LOUD sits on the earth's surface while QUIET nestles underground beneath 100 meters of rock that shield the lab from most of the high-energy cosmic rays that constantly shoot down from outer space to invisibly bombard our planet. Together, the labs carry out controlled experiments measuring the effect of cosmic rays on qubits.
Qubits, or quantum bits, perform calculations in quantum computers. They are similar to "traditional" bits in "normal," classical computers, in that they can, in theory, be designed in a variety of possible mediums, so long as they properly store information to allow for the performance of logical operations. However, unlike classical bits, which can only be in one state at a time (either off or on, 0 or 1), quantum bits can be in a "superposition" of states. This means qubits can occupy both states (0 and 1) at the same time, allowing multiple mathematical operations to be carried out simultaneously.
Through conversation with the amazing scientists at Fermilab, I learned about the exciting process that ensues when qubits are put into action.
First, scientists initialize several qubits (an "array" of qubits) to their desired superposition states. For a brief moment of time, the qubits remain in their superpositions and are able to perform calculations as intended. The state of the qubits at this moment can be imagined as a complex system of many simultaneous waves, each with a different amplitude and period that correlates with the qubit's probability of possessing a particular potential energy. The composition of these waves fluctuates as the qubits undergo algorithmic operations that alter the probability of their state of potential energy.
However, this high-energy moment doesn't last for long. Very quickly (within microseconds) the qubits begin to "decohere" from their unstable superposition states. Each qubit loses its quantum properties and returns to being in just one state, its "ground state," the state of lowest possible potential energy. Within an array of qubits, the decoherence of each qubit usually happens out of sync from the others. This decoherence happens "naturally," simply because the qubits are affected by the "noise" of their subatomic environment, such as minuscule temperature fluctuations or tiny amounts of radioactive decay from nearby materials. Qubits are fragile creatures!
In addition to this naturally-occurring decoherence, and of special interest to the QUIET/LOUD labs, more drastic (but also less frequent) decoherence is caused by cosmic rays, such as X-rays emanating from the sun's solar corona. A cosmic ray can add a huge amount of energy to a qubit, suddenly knocking the qubit, or possibly several qubits, out of superposition back to the ground state or even to an entirely different value. Fermilab’s goal with the paired labs is to minimize the environmental noise to isolate and measure the effect of cosmic rays so that these effects can be understood and eventually mitigated.
In QUIET/LOUD, these quantum processes find musical analogy in three ways. First, I employ a fabric of spinning gestures that continually, asynchronously, wind down before immediately "rebooting," expressing the constant process of decoherence and re-initialization that takes place inside a quantum computer. Additionally, musical melodies and motives echo around the ensemble at different rates, enacting constructive and deconstructive interference patterns that evoke the complex wave function describing a qubit array's fluctuating quantum states. And as a final analogy, a cosmic ray strikes in the form a moment of extreme energy, bringing the music to its state of lowest energy. Taken together, these music processes offer a sonic impression of what might be experienced on the quantum level: complexity that looks chaotic at first, but is in fact highly organized until disturbed.
QUIET/LOUD was commissioned by fivebyfive for premiere in their October 2025 season concert "Subatomic Mysteries" and was written during my residence as the 2025 Fermi Forward Discovery Group Guest Composer.
I give my heartfelt thanks to Fermilab scientists Silvia Zorzetti and Doğa Kürkçüoğlu for their time, generosity, expertise, and conversation; to Natalie Johnson, Head of the Office of Education and Public Engagement at Fermilab; and to Georgia Schwender, Visual Arts Coordinator and founder of the Fermilab artist-in-residence program. My warmest gratitude extends to Laura Lentz, Artistic Director of fivebyfive, for her creative vision and execution in commissioning this piece and its companions, all inspired by our amazing subatomic world.
— Amy Nam
Branches (2025) - Steve Danyew
Branches explores the “many worlds theory,” a quantum theory that suggests there may be multiple simultaneous universes or “worlds” happening in parallel to the one we are aware of. The idea is that decisions and events constantly split the world into multiple parallel universes – new branch worlds are constantly being created. The theory hypothesizes that each time we make a decision, for example, when we opt to go out to dinner rather than stay in, two realities are created: one where we go out, and one where we stay in. We are only aware of the reality we are currently living in, but the theory says that essentially a copy of us exists in that other reality, that other branch, that other possibility that we didn’t choose.
In Branches, I wanted to try to tell the story of this idea, both poetically and musically. Together with my wife Ashley, we wrote a poem, which ultimately helped me organize the music. For the musical ideas, I wanted to complement the many worlds theory with musical techniques that I think relate. The music unfolds in a way that tries to emulate how the universe might unfold, with these branching, splitting realities. In the music, there are times when one line becomes two, two becomes three, etc. There are times when the melody is stretched out in augmentation (twice as slow) or laid atop itself in inversion (upside down), other possibilities or branches of the same musical tree.
Much of the music is derived from a sequence used commonly in music for centuries – the falling fifth progression. Repeating the sequence in different guises creates a myriad of variations, similar to the variations of realities posited by the many worlds theory.
The many worlds theory is a fascinating idea, and it leaves us thinking: are there really copies of us out there living different lives in another branch of the universe? What decisions have I made that have put me into the life I’m living? Who would I be, and what would my life look like now if I had made a different choice somewhere along the way?
— Steve Danyew
Branches | Ashley and Steve danyew
There’s an old saying:
“Wisdom begins with wonder.”
As a child, playing
Outside, I found wonder—
In the bird song
filling the tree canopy,
like a forest cathedral,
In the scent of pine needles,
Brushing by,
In the clouds stretching
across a painted sky.
But wisdom, wisdom eluded me.
Perhaps it was hidden,
Tucked away out of sight.
Somewhere up high
Where birds and dreams take flight.
“I know just the place,”
I thought.
The path was worn and winding
From the house to the field.
Each step a step toward finding
Wisdom, to be revealed.
I paused at the edge,
Shielding my eyes from the sun.
A grove of trees in endless number,
But I could only choose one.
Further into the field,
The trees grew before me.
With rounded crown and slender arms,
Dressed in green and silver and brown.
With eyes to the sky,
Wandering,
Wondering,
Until I came upon one
With a curved limb,
Bowed low.
An invitation.
I paused to consider.
And then I began to climb.
At first, slowly,
Then more assured.
Each branch a choice,
A chance,
A change in perspective.
Every crack and creak
A call into question.
When I lost my footing,
I held on tight,
Cursed out of spite.
Looking out through the thick branches,
Wondering, would it be
Easier to climb a different tree?
I caught my breath.
Is that me?
In that other tree?
No, it couldn’t be.
And though my arms began to ache,
Still I climbed.
I had come this far
And yet the top still seemed
Beyond me.
The more I climbed,
The more I saw,
Leaving all the other trees behind
Until the wind whistled in my hair
And wonder filled my mind.
The landscape unfolded before me
Like a crinkled map.
The stream, a blue, wavy line,
The field, a small, golden gap,
Tucked in between velvety green.
Looking for wisdom
And finding none,
I began to climb down,
Branch by branch,
Step by step,
The way I had begun.
When I reached the ground,
I looked around
Confused, perplexed.
My tree stood alone
Where there once were many—
Where were the rest?
I regarded it now,
In this time and place:
Alive and magnificent,
In stature and grace.
A picture of strength,
Though only I knew,
The scars it shows,
The way it grew,
The cracks and groans,
As it became my own.
Copyright 2025 Ashley & Steve Danyew
Branches was written for fivebyfive and is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Constant (2011) - Julia Seeholzer
Constant is a work that won an early fivebyfive Call for Scores (2017), and taps into fivebyfive’s curiosity to play pieces that are open instrumentation or have some improvisatory elements as part of the work. With 10 “cells” of music, each player follows the other, changing the cell upon listening to the group as a whole or the musician they are following. The “constant” is the piano’s rhythmic 8th note figure that carries the piece along to its end.
— fivebyfive
“This piece’s steadiness offers a reflection point in the program to reflect on how, like in quantum physics, underlying patterns and stability can still be found.”
— Laura Lentz
playing dice with the
universe (2025) -
sean william calhoun
Centuries of scientific progress led toward increasing determinism — results could be predicted accurately given sufficient understanding of the physical laws at play and the starting conditions. But a little over a century ago, physicists began finding instances at very small scales where outcomes were inherently indeterministic — the distribution of probabilities of physical events could be known, but within those, the outcome would be fundamentally random. This received resistance, including from Einstein, who famously said (what is often translated as) “God does not play dice with the universe” — asserting that the universe was still deterministic, but some yet-unknown variables would explain away the seeming indeterminism.
But over time, hidden-variable theories have repeatedly been disproven, and current evidence supports that, at a quantum scale, metaphorical dice are being played with the universe. And so Playing Dice with the Universe is about various parts of quantum physics and its indeterminacy, and the electronics are all derived from recordings of shaking, rolling, and dropping dice.
Due to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, position and momentum cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrarily high precision. At a macro scale, you can know where a train is, and how fast it’s going. But at a quantum scale, determining a particle’s position past a certain precision necessarily makes your measurement of its momentum less precise, and vice-versa. And so, in Uncertainty, the ensemble’s momentum through the harmonic progression is fixed — they will spend a certain time on each chord, then move on — but the position of their notes is variable, not locked into a meter.
While electrons in an atom have different possible energy states, those states are not continuous, but quantized. And so in Quantization, the players’ rhythms are quantized to a rhythmic grid, and they flip between low and high energy states. Each member of the ensemble plays on a rhythmic cycle of a different length, and when they move to a high-energy state, they play higher and twice as fast. Initially, all of the players switch together, but later, their energy states are not always synchronized.
Due to wave-particle duality and the resulting uncertainty, a particle won’t have a precise trajectory, but rather a wavefunction of possible paths, interfering with each other to make a probability distribution of possible outcomes. But until a measurement is carried out and the electron’s wavefunction collapses into a particular outcome, the particle (wave) is in a state of superposition — having probabilities of a range of positions simultaneously. And so in Superposition, the electric guitar plays a melody representing the most probable range of outcomes, while the flute and clarinet play alternate versions around it, representing less probable ranges.
Particles can be entangled such that, until they are interfered with, their states will correlate. This means that, if you know the particles’ correlation and you observe one, you can know the state of the other, however far away it is. And so in Entanglement, eight times a d8 (octahedral die) is rolled and its result called out, and all the members of the ensemble are entangled with that die, so they play the music corresponding to that number.
When you make helium-4 very cold (or helium-3 even colder), it becomes a superfluid. This puts all of the helium atoms in the same quantum state, giving them zero viscosity, so they can flow through very tiny gaps, spin in vortices indefinitely, and can siphon themselves over the edge of a container to flow down. So in Superfluidity, most of the instruments repeatedly flow down and then swirl in vortices of notes while the bass plays a long melody.
Playing Dice with the Universe was composed for the ensemble fivebyfive.
— Sean William Calhoun
Choreographer’s Note:
The clarity of how the music was created based upon the scientific concepts made for a fulfilling and generative process of dance-making. Our process was tied heavily to the musical exploration of each idea.The dancers and I spent time with the science, considered the ways in which Sean represented the concept in music, and listened closely to the related music. I provided a frame for the dancers and asked them to embody the music and concepts within the physical material they generated. From an outside perspective, the music and the dance may not seem to integrate but how we arrived at the movement relates directly to the music. This is the most clear in the section in which we are responding to the rolling of the octahedral die.
— Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp
BIFURCACIONES (BIFURCATIONS) (2025) -Felipe Pérez Santiago
Bifurcaciones (Bifurcations) is based on the book "El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan" (The Garden of Branching Paths) by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose theme has been said to foreshadow the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The book itself is inspired by the work of the philosopher and science fiction author Olaf Stapledon, whose book "Star Maker", according to Borges, is "besides a prodigious novel, a probable and faithful system of the plurality of worlds and their dramatic history"
I took the idea of these two narratives as a departure point and developed a piece that involves multiple elements simultaneously in a "literary-musical quantum" way.
— Felipe Pérez Santiago
Choreographer’s Note:
Upon first listening to Felipe’s music, my immediate choreographic question was: how to match the sheer intensity of the score? The idea of a rope connecting two dancers occurred to me as a way to complement the music’s tension, while simultaneously acting as a compelling metaphor for quantum entanglement. Thus began my reading into quantum entanglement: how two entangled electrons (or photons) can share a state, like spinning in the same direction, no matter how far apart they are – if you measure the spin of one, you will know the spin of the other. The dance explores properties of quantum entanglement including the dual nature of quantum objects as both waves and particles; the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (we can know either the momentum or the position of a particle, but cannot know both at the same time); quantum paths as probabilities rather than linear traverses; and Schrodinger’s “cat paradox.” While quantum phenomena are most obvious at the microscopic scale, even very large objects such as humans obey the laws of quantum mechanics. Indeed, the dance also asks the human question: how does it feel to be entangled with another person?
— Mariah Steele