The Debut of Bionic Ballet

Ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. MIT Professor Herr said “we can rebuild her.” He lost both legs from frostbite in a rock climbing accident, and knew what could be done.

So Herr’s lab launched a 200-day research study of the dynamics of dance — how dancers move and what forces they apply while they go. They embedded the fundamentals of dance into a bespoke limb, and you can see how her debut performance went below… TED2014 Video