Dancing like a lymphocyte

In 2024, Francesca Di Rosa and Adrian Hayday began a collaboration with Dennie Wilson, dance artist, educator and researcher at the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD), aimed at using dance to communicate to the public how virus/ cell and vaccine/ cell interactions occur in the body upon infection and vaccination, respectively.

The resulting short dance film, created with film-makers Michael O’Halloran and Tim Whitehead and entitled ‘Speeding to protection’, became part of Francesca’s and Adrian’s exhibit ‘Vaccination, a time machine’ at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition 2024. 

Undergraduate Ballet Education students at the RAD playing four different ‘characters’, specifically, lung cells, viruses, lymphocytes and vaccines, embodied the immune response against viruses and the enhancement of that response by vaccination. In the last act of the choreography, lymphocytes energized by an additional dose of vaccine, known as a booster, danced to create a barrier that completely blocked viruses attempting to attack the lung cells.
 

A dance to create bridges

“Vaccines are life-saving preventative interventions and vaccination of healthy people in a community is an important measure to protect those who are vulnerable to infection but cannot be vaccinated owing to their impaired healthy conditions.” Adrian Hayday says. 

“The display of ‘Speeding to protection’ at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition was intended to engage and fascinate visitors, to break the barrier of fear after the pandemics and to create bridges of empathy and curiosity with the public.”

A dance as a metaphor 

Acccording to Francesca Di Rosa: “When we as scientists try to understand the biology of the immune response and communicate it, we use words, infographics, slide presentations. 

As a complete break from this, it proved stimulating to use an entirely different mode like a dance choreography. While inevitably oversimplfying things, it was exciting to discover that dance could consistently represent the dynamics of lymphocyte responses after stimulation by either virus or vaccine!” 

A dance for educating future dance teachers

‘Speeding to protection’ was highly inspirational for the RAD Ballet Education undergraduates who joined the project as dancers and choreographer assistants, under the guidance of educator Dennie Wilson and project planner Suzie Lorimer. 

The Independent Higher Education (IHE), a UK body that promotes collaboration across the higher education sector, selected RAD among the three finalists of the IHE Awards 2024, category 'Inspiring Course'. This award recognises IHE members who are transforming the learning experience of students and delivering impact through innovative course design, content and delivery.

Rhythms of immunity

In 2025, a miniseries of public engagement activities, entitled ‘Rhythms of immunity’ was created as a legacy of ‘Speeding to protection’. The art-science collaboration involved Francesca Di Rosa, Adrian Hayday, Dennie Wilson and Fran Balkwill, founder and director of Center of the Cell, Queen Mary University of London. 

The miniseries included a science outreach event at the Crick Auditorium and a visitor activity at the Crick Discovery Day, both organized with support by Crick Public Engagement and Communication teams, and an educational workshop for students at Center of the Cell. ‘Rhythms of immunity 2025’ offered participants a range of opportunities ranging from attending a live dance performance through discussing cutting-edge research with scientists, to embodying a virus in a choreographed movement.
 

Speed in dance and science

The ‘Dancing like a lymphocyte’ project inspired some interesting reflections, for example around the meaning of ‘speed’ in the work of either a choreographer or an immunologist. Francesco Seganfreddo, science communicator, interviewed on this topic Dennie Wilson, choreographer at the Royal Academy of Dance, and Ambra Natalini, post-doc in immunology at the Francis Crick Institute. The recorded interview Speed is now available in the podcast ‘On time’ (Episode 2, part 1 and 2).