Dressed in black and wearing a facemask, the dancer leaps and pirouttes across Budapest's deserted central Heroes Square - to the strains of a melody that mirrors the molecular structure of the coronavirus.

To mark World Dance Day, Zsolt Vencel Kovacs was performing his interpretation of part of the composition created this month by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists.

"For me this music brings melancholy, its monotony gives me tension and as the music progresses it becomes more rhythmical and aggressive and at the end it calms down. It inspired me," the 21-year-old told Reuters.