Feet

Jim Usherwood is Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and Reader at the Structure and Motion Laboratory in the Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the Royal Veterinary College.  Jim's research interests cover the mechanics of both terrestrial and aerial locomotion. He is finishing a project on the mechanics of walking in birds and toddlers, and is currently part of the team working on cooperative aerodynamics and radio-based animal localisation CARDyAL.

Wang Ping is author of 13 books of poetry, prose, translation, including Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. She’s also a photographer, dancer, and installation artist. Her most recent multi-media exhibition “We Are Water” at the Soap Factory included 100 artists from the Yangtze and Mississippi Rivers. She is professor of English at Macalester College, founder and director of Kinship of Rivers project. Her memoir: Flying: Life of Miracles between the Yangtze and Mississippi, is forthcoming from Calumet Press in February 2015.

(Photo: Macalester College /Sara Rubinstein)

Patrick Rump is a sports scientist notable for his recent work with ballet dancers. He currently works for the Royal Ballet and has worked with the Forsythe Company. His work is now the subject of a short film, Dance Sports Science and Patrick Rump. His method - applying the techniques of sports science to dancing - has had much success, including in his contribution to the recovery of acclaimed Royal Ballet ballerina, Alina Cojocaru, as well as other world-famous principals such as Mathias Heymann and Federico Bonelli, and Tamara Rojo. Patrick is from Germany. He is a former karate champion. 

Let’s free ourselves from money and shoes.  Wang Ping puts forward her idea in the form of a poem.  She wants everyone around the world to give up money for a day and adopt a system of gift exchange – “a song for food, a house for dance….a poem or story to move us from place to place”.  In her vision we would go physically and metaphorically barefoot – in touch with each other and the earth.  Freed from the shackles of business transactions and free to play.

(Photo: Burning a bank note. Credit: Getty Images)