Nebraska Science Festival attendees at the April 13 Science Expo at the Durham Museum are in for a rare treat. You see, the Dancing Scientist hasn’t been seen much lately.
That’s because the Dancing Scientist is an actual scientist – a Ph.D. student in biochemistry at UCLA. “Since starting grad school I’ve done very few shows,” said the Dancing Scientist – real name Jeffrey Vinokur. “I’m constantly in the lab. These days, I’ve been working seven days a week.”
But he’ll be in Omaha, and here he’ll unleash the kind of excitement that’s garnered him more than 15 million YouTube views and TV appearances from the Big Ten Network to “America’s Got Talent.”
Kids love him. “I want to show them why science is cool,” he said.
He wasn’t always the Dancing Scientist. For a long time he was, as he describes it, “Scientist by day, dancer by night.” He led a double life.
“I would dance and I had a dance group, but I would never talk about science with them,” he said. “In the lab I would never be like, ‘I do all this dance stuff when I leave work.’ ”
When it comes to science, the bug bit him early (probably when he was catching them, as a kid). You know when you’re a kid and you see an experiment and they say, “Don’t try this at home”?
“Of course I tried it at home.”
And then he read science textbooks for fun (well, he looked at the pictures).
But it surprised him how much he enjoys being a performer, how much he loves show biz.
He got good at dancing the way you get good at anything. “I’d practice every day for at least an hour a day and sometimes more,” he said. “On the weekends, it was all I did.”
Now he does fizzing, flashing, oozing, oohing shows. His goal is to send kids running to science class the next day.
But will he finally have to choose between two worlds? Between becoming a great bench scientist or becoming the next Bill Nye?
He can’t see leaving either behind.
“I love teaching, I love research. I’m not sure if I could do the outreach stuff only. You would miss being in research every day, discovering new things, doing new stuff.”
But then, he can’t stop dancing.
The Dancing Scientist is going to see if he can keep doing both.
Free festival tickets are available to print off on the festival website or can be found in the festival program guide. Guides are located at each participating site.