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Senior thesis: Pursuing dual interests
Ruth Stevens Princeton NJ -- Nic Petry spent last summer tracking a young ocelot named George through the Panamanian rainforest. In between these all-night forays, Petry would slip off to the research compound cafeteria to work out some choreography for a dance.
"The creative potential drew me to dance," said Petry of his dual interests. "I did the science to balance out the fact that I think way on the other side. I'm more abstract, and I needed something here that would help me learn how to structure myself, which is what the science did. But in dance is where I feel I can really be expressive and ultimately where I can change and affect people." The idea for the thesis on ocelots jelled during his junior year when Petry spent a semester in Panama with Martin Wikelski, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, using radio transmitters to track an antbird species. Wikelski and his colleagues approached Petry about using similar methods of telemetry to track ocelots. The cats are extremely difficult to study because they hunt at night and spend much of their time in thick brush. They live in an area stretching from southern Texas to northern Brazil, and are endangered because of the erosion of their forest habitat. With support from the University's Becky Colvin Memorial Fund, Petry was able to spend last summer on Barro Colorado Island in Panama tracking the ocelots. He collaborated with researchers at the University of Illinois to design a collar that would not only track the cats but include a microphone to capture their sounds. He then worked with a student from a university in Panama to trap the cats, attach the collars and monitor their activity under the guidance of Roland Kays of the New York State Museum. "If we were close enough, we could hear everything George was doing," Petry said. The project provided the researchers with a great deal of new data on ocelots. It is expected to be continued on a larger scale with radio towers in addition to people tracking the cats. "Nic's project was a major breakthrough in the field and helped us secure funding from the National Science Foundation," said Wikelski, who has been advising Petry on his thesis. "Only somebody as dedicated, careful and athletic as Nic could follow an ocelot at night through dense underbrush in a tropical rainforest very impressive." On a recent Saturday morning, Petry was up at the crack of dawn working on his ocelot paper before heading over to the Matthews Acting Studio at 185 Nassau St. to consult with a technician on the lighting for his dance show. Petry was a tailback on Princeton's football team during his freshman year, "but I decided that wasn't for me and took a random dance class," he said. That class was Professor Ze'eva Cohen's "Introduction to Movement and Dance" "Dancing for Klutzes," she jokingly calls it. "I get people who just want to try dance one time and see what it's like," she said. "And then I get people like Nic, who discover a latent talent." Petry has been working with Cohen, who is his thesis adviser, and others in the Program in Theater and Dance ever since. She is effusive in her praise for his abilities and his potential as a dancer and choreographer. "He comes up with solutions and ideas that are so fresh," Cohen said. "He is very creative and unusually physically coordinated. He draws from a broad range of musical sensibility. He also is highly interested in challenging an audience he wants the audience not just to be entertained but to think and to get involved." In fact, Petry said his goal is to get audiences more involved in the medium. "In coming to love dance and art as a means of communication and humanity, I have continually found a problem in conveyance," he wrote in this thesis proposal. "Beautiful, highly intellectual art that could move me to tears would have been completely out of reach for me before I began to study it academically and physically." "As a dancer and choreographer," he continued, "I want to share as much of the wonder and lightness of being I've experienced as I can to as many people as I can. To do this, I want to work toward eroding the barrier that exists between dance seen as 'dance,' and dance as an expression of movement and life." Petry has won a full scholarship to study for a master of fine arts in dance at the University of Illinois. He hopes to be a professional choreographer and dancer, but doesn't rule out the possibility of returning to biology at some point in the future. In the meantime, he was looking forward to completing an elaborate dance of another kind this semester by producing his show on May 1-2 and turning in his biology thesis by May 6. |
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