The 2012 World Science Festival Kicks Off @ the United Palace Theater

BY Michelle Michalos

On May 30, the 2012 World Science Festival returns to New York City for its fifth anniversary with over 50 programs that meld the scientific with the artistic. Co-founded in 2008 by author and physicist Brian Greene and television journalist Tracy Day, the festival seeks to attract leading scientific minds, renowned artists and influential thinkers to present science in novel ways, attracting a broad audience from music lovers to science geeks.

“The World Science Festival individual programs are for anyone with a curious mind,” says Greene. “It allows everyone – kids and adults, novice and enthusiast – to experience science in a unique and thrilling way.”

With around 300,000 New Yorkers expected to attend, the festival spans four of the five boroughs and includes outdoor programs at Washington Square Park, NYU-Poly Tech’s quad in downtown Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center, and Brooklyn Bridge Park. “Part of the fun of the festival is that it utilizes such a wide variety of spaces that are unique and diverse, just like New Yorkers and New York City,” says Greene.

One of the most unusual and spectacular indoor settings for the festival is the United Palace Theater in Washington Heights. Designed in a neo-classical Cambodian style in 1930, the former movie palace will host the festival’s opening night event, “Icarus at the Edge of Time,” a multimedia performance piece about a boy who challenges the formidable power of a black hole.

Read more: ‘Icarus at the Edge of Time’ Opens the 2012 World Science Festival | MetroFocus | THIRTEEN.

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