The Stardance Project

In 1977, science fiction author Spider Robinson collaborated with his wife Jeanne on the zero-gravity dance novella "Stardance." The story had an unusual beginning for two reasons. The first was that Spider and Jeanne simply needed the money. They'd gone from their home in Nova Scotia to visit relatives in New York and Boston to show off their new daughter, Terri. They ran out of money and needed to get back, so Spider decided to write something. Being married to a dancer, he chose dance. Being a science fiction writer who wanted to sell a dance story to Analog, the science fiction magazine he set the dance in space.

As he wrote, Jeanne occasionally peered over his shoulder. She made a couple of corrections regarding dance terms, which Spider grumblingly accepted. And then we come to the second reason the story's beginning was unusual. As Spider tells it in his online diary entry:

Ten minutes later Jeanne clearly exceeded her mandate as technical consultant: she said, referring to the protagonist, "Shara would never do that. She's just not that kind of person."

Seriously annoyed now--this was exactly why he didn't show work-in-progress: well-meaning people were always fiddling with the confidence he needed to keep working--Spider began to explain why Jeanne was wrong. Assembling his arguments, he discovered that she was right. He thought about this, and about Jeanne's uncanny ability to "read" people accurately on short acquaintance...and then about how badly he would have blundered if she had not just rescued him.

"Pull up a chair," he said, and added her name to the byline.

The result of Spider listening to Jeanne went beyond simply selling the story so they could get back to Nova Scotia. "Stardance" won a Nebula award in 1977 and a Hugo award in 1978, both for best novella. It was expanded into the novel of the same name published in 1979, followed by the novels Starseed (1991) and Starmind (1995).

Jeanne Robinson was the founder and artistic director of the Nova Dance Company in Halifax, Nova Scotia from 1980 to 1987. Jeanne choreographed a dance piece called "Higher Ground" which simulated dance in zero gravity. With Jeanne dancing, it was given a trial at the New England Science Fiction Association's convention Boskone 17 in February 1980. In August 1980 a more elaborate presentation, which included film simulating zero gravity dance, was presented at Noreascon 2, the 1980 World Science Fiction Convention.

That performance, along with Stardance, caught the attention of NASA. She was shortlisted for a seat in the Civilian in Space program and slated to become the first zero gravity dancer. Sadly, the Challenger disaster in January 1986 took the life of Christa McAuliffe and ended the Civilian in Space program. It was a huge setback, not only for NASA, but also for Jeanne's dream.

The Robinsons expanded their ideas of zero gravity dance with Starseed, published in 1991 and Starmind, published in 1994. The first introduced the idea of the captive asteroid Top Step, a training ground for those wishing to become Stardancers.

With advances in computer-generated graphics (CGI) in recent years, it became possible to make a film showing dance in zero gravity using Earthbound dancers. Jeanne wrote a script for a short film and assembled a core production team. Originally aimed at being a ten-minute production, this later expanded when James Sposto joined the effort. A forty-minute IMAX film was proposed, with a story separate from the novels but encompassing the ideas of dance and humanity found in them.

In 2007, a short concept video (shown below) was presented at the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial in Kansas City. This led to an offer from Peter Diamandis, founder of Zero G Corporation, for a chance to have Jeanne and Vancouver dancer Kathleen McDonagh try out dance moves aboard Zero G's Boeing 727. The plane takes passengers through a series of parabolic arcs which give them fifteen to thirty-five seconds of microgravity. James Sposto bought a third place on the flight.

The flight took place on December 30, 2007. Robinson, McDonagh and Sposto were in one of the three compartments along with a few other paying passengers. Zero G had arranged it so there were fewer people than normal in their compartment, and those passengers not part of the project were very generous in giving room for the zero-g dance experiment.

In the time following the flight, the film idea continued to evolve, and Robinson and Sposto realized they should go for a full-length film incorporating the story from the trilogy of Spider and Jeanne's novels. This vision continues to develop.

The Stardance Trilogy
An omnibus of Stardance, Starseed and Starmind. The trilogy combines the beauty of zero-gravity dance with contact with very alien beings. The result changes humanity forever. This omnibus edition was published in September 2006.

Stardance
Shara Drummond combines the beauty of Venus de Milo with dance talent greater than Pavlova's. But she's too big, and will never be more than an understudy. So she goes into space and creates zero gravity dance. When the aliens, beings of pure light who dance between the stars, appear, Shara must prove that the human race is ... human with her new form of dance.

Starseed
Rain McLeod danced on Earth for 32 years until she couldn't dance any more. She tried living without dance. When that didn't work, she traveled to Top Step, the captive asteriod and home of the Stardance Foundation, to become a Stardancer, a human joined with the alien symbiote that allows humans to live in space.

The Star Dancers
This includes Stardance, and Starseed, the first two books of the Stardance trilogy by Spider and Jeanne Robinson.

Starmind
The Starmind is the telepathic joining of all the Stardancers. In 2064, Earth is enjoying peace and prosperity thanks to the Starmind. Composer Rand Porter travels to High Orbit to become a Shaper of music and visual effects for the Stardance Company. While there, he finds himself caught up in a conspiracy to destroy the Starmind.