Magma is generated within a region hundreds of kilometers wide, while volcanism at mid-ocean ridges (the process that makes new oceanic crust) occurs within a region ~10 km wide. How does this focusing and extraction of melt occur within Earth's mantle? What role does melt migration and melt extraction play in facilitating plate tectonics (a process unique to Earth in our solar system)? In my PhD I performed experiments in which a sample of olivine (the most abundant mineral in the mantle) with a few percent magma is twisted at high-pressure and high-temperature (300 MPa and 1200 °C) to explore the interactions between deformation and melt migration. When the rock is deformed, pressure gradients develop that cause the melt to spontaneously segregate into organized networks of melt-rich bands. In Earth, such melt-rich bands could be channels that rapidly transport melt from great depths to the Earth's surface.

This dance incorporates several dancers each repeating the same phrase of motions. The motions represent the strain, shearing, flow, and alignment of magma. Initially, the movements are uncoordinated, but as the dance progresses the dancers spontaneously organize their motions.

The music is a piece that I composed specifically for this dance. All of the sounds are actual data recorded by seismometers during earthquakes. The frequency range of seismic waves is too low for our ears to pick up, but if several hours of data are compressed into a few seconds then we can "hear" earthquakes. Most of the sounds used here are from the Niigata-Chuetsu Earthquake of July 16, 2007 and the Sumatra-Andaman Islands Earthquake of December 12, 2004. (Thanks to Ben Holtzman for providing sound samples.)