Merritt Moore: The Future of Robots on Earth and Beyond

Dr. Merritt Moore has built a career rarely found in a single person: professional ballet dancer and quantum physicist. She has performed with major ballet companies while studying physics at Harvard and later completing a PhD in Atomic and Laser Physics at Oxford.

Moore is perhaps best known for her robot performances, presented on major stages worldwide. Her goal is to shape how humans experience emerging technologies — ensuring that a future shaped by machines remains expressive, imaginative, and centred on human experience.

“If we’re going to have robots everywhere,” she said, “let’s make them inspiring.”

Ballet Beginnings

Moore began ballet relatively late, after her mother encouraged dance lessons to improve her posture. As a child, she wasn’t naturally drawn to words, and movement offered a new way to express herself.

“I didn’t talk much as a child,” she said. “Dance felt like the first place I could fully express myself. It felt authentic, so I just got hooked.”

Starting behind peers also shaped her internal orientation. She was consistently the least experienced dancer in the studio and was told early that she would likely never reach a professional level. The absence of expectation removed competitive pressure and ego, anchoring her motivation in genuine enjoyment rather than achievement.

“I was always the worst one in the room,” she said. “So I learned to show up purely because I loved it.”

Physics and Parallel Paths

Physics emerged from a different but equally intrinsic drive. As a child, Moore was absorbed by puzzles and mathematical problems, often sneaking out of bed to complete them.

Physics, to her, represented the ultimate puzzle.

“It felt like the puzzle of the universe,” she said. “There’s magic in not understanding everything yet.”

By late adolescence, she was pursuing both trajectories simultaneously — studying physics at Harvard while training intensely and auditioning for companies. The period between 17 and 19 was marked by extreme workload and uncertainty. 

“I didn’t know if I would make it in physics or ballet,” she said. “I was training more than 20 hours a week on top of about 70 hours of university work. There was very little sleep.”

Convergence

The integration of dance and physics developed gradually. During her PhD at Oxford, Moore participated in a programme requiring researchers to explain scientific experiments through movement. Translating equations into embodied form changed how she understood her own work.

“It forced me to ask questions I’d never asked,” she said. “I had to think about the physicality of what the equations were actually describing.”

By that stage, she had already danced with multiple companies while continuing her physics research. Maintaining separation between the two identities had become more effortful than combining them.

“I was hiding from the dance world that I did physics, and from physics that I danced,” she said. “After nearly a decade, I thought: why not both?”

Bridging Art and Science

Moore rejects the common dichotomy between analytical and creative cognition.

“The idea that people are either left-brained or right-brained is wrong,” she said. “Everyone has both.”

In practice, she experiences the two disciplines as dependent on imagination, experimentation, and iterative refinement. Dance benefits from structural thinking; science benefits from visualisation and reframing.

“In the lab, you need imagination,” she said. “In dance, you need analysis. Both are required.”

Rather than conflict, she experiences them as alternating modes. Physical work rests the mind; intellectual work rests the body.

“People think my schedule looks intense,” she said. “But for me, it feels like I’m constantly taking holidays between them.”

Dancing With Machines

Moore’s work with robots began during pandemic isolation, when she programmed an industrial robotic arm to move in synchrony with her choreography.

The collaboration revealed unexpected emotional dynamics.

“It became a companion,” she said. “Some of my most vulnerable performances have been with the robot.”

Audience responses also challenged assumptions about virtuosity. Minimal relational gestures — shared timing, mirrored motion, proximity — generated stronger engagement than technically complex sequences.

Working with machines sharpened her sense of non-verbal communication: even tiny shifts in timing or proximity made the robot’s movements feel attentive, distant, or even threatening.

“Body language is more powerful than what a robot says,” she said. “Engineers often underestimate its importance.”

The Future of Human–Machine Interaction

For Moore, the question is not whether robots will proliferate but what kind of world they will create around us. Functional optimisation alone, she argues, risks environments that feel mechanical.

“I don’t want a billion grey functional robots in my life,” she said. “That feels like living in a factory.”

Her work aims to embed artistry and human authorship into robotic systems, creating experiential machines that enhance human expression.

“I want a human artist behind every robot,” she said.

She does not believe AI will replace human creativity. Instead, she sees it raising the standard for what humans create. Her deeper concern lies elsewhere: the possibility that intelligent systems may compete for human intimacy and ultimately erode relationships.

“Social media was fighting for our attention,” she said. “Now, with AI, it’s going to be fighting for our intimacy.”

Dancing on the Moon

Moore’s work has also extended toward space exploration. She was shortlisted for the SpaceX dearMoon lunar art mission — a planned circumlunar mission of artists aboard Elon Musk’s Starship — and previously underwent astronaut selection training for a BBC programme.

The idea of dance beyond Earth remains part of her imagination. For her, its significance lies in expanding human expression into new physical environments.

“It’s part of being human to explore,” she said. “To see how far we can go and push the limits.”

Toward an Artistic Robotics Future

Looking ahead, Moore hopes to influence how robots are designed as they become part of everyday human environments. Her ambition extends beyond performance: she wants future technologies to be shaped by artistic intent from the outset.

“If we’re going to have robots everywhere,” she said, “let’s make them inspiring. I want the future to feel exciting and creative — not stolen and boring.”