In this Big Think video, How Ballet is Like Math, science fiction author Catherine Asaro explains how ballet is very much about algorithms, patterns, and numerics. She also observes that not only dancers but athletes as well must possess good spatial perception. She went on to say that spatial perception easily translates into physics and that everything dancers do in an exercise is an algorithm. When they learn the exercise, it becomes incorporated into their bodies.

Dancers have to learn how to execute complex patterns beautifully and quickly. They must also know how to reverse them as well as be ready to start from any point in the exercise when rehearsing them. This means that they are incorporating spatial perception aspects as well as the ability to quickly see and make algorithms and patterns in their minds.

This video was very useful because it introduced me to a new connection between ballet and math. Before watching this video I had no idea that algorithms and spatial perception were involved in ballet. Most websites and videos I had previously found focused more on the symmetry and geometry in ballet, whereas this one focused on something completely different.