Dancers from 30 States at 56 Different Locations Dance Across America
WHAT: 6th Bi-annual National Water Dance
WHEN: Saturday, April 20th, 4 pm EDT / 1pm PDT (Live streamed)
WHERE: Rainmaker Fountain at Frances Stevens Park
TICKETS: Free & Open to the Community
Desert Movement Arts presents As It Is, And As It Could Be For the 6TH Annual National Water Dance.
Coming together on Saturday, April 20 at 1pm PDT / 4 pm EDT are hundreds of dancers from across the country to perform a site-specific dance at a river, a bay, the ocean, a fountain or any water site nearby. From Seattle to Mississippi, Maine to California, Wisconsin to Florida dancers of all ages and experience will join others in uniting to celebrate and collectively take responsibility for protecting our Water.
With live music by Lorah Yaccarino, Desert Movement Arts will present their 20 minute piece As It Is, And As It Could Be at the uptown water sculpture fountain, Rainmaker by artist David Morris at Frances Stevens Park.
This year, Desert Movement Arts addresses the problem of access to bodies of water without an entrance fee. Here in the desert, there is nowhere we can rehearse and perform near a body of water that is not privately owned. The 35-foot-tall stainless steel Rainmaker water sculpture is in a public park. Different from our usual movement choices, some of this piece is quite architectural.
We are aware that water is a commodity—contrived, controlled, consumed—not unlike women’s bodies. A section of the work confronts this. The closing section is an imagining what we dream is possible—respect, reverence, reciprocity.
Quote from dancer:
“In this dance, I feel I’m connecting with all elements of my environment while responding to the structure and movement of the water in it, and the bustle of cars, people, grass, integrating all of it.” Bonni Ross of Desert Movement Arts.
Mission
Our mission is to create collaborative movement art that builds
embodied expression in the desert environment.
Vision
Our vision is to create somatic movement work and community education that explores communal forms of immersion in a specific site or land. We invite active community involvement. We collaborate with musicians and artists to create original compositions and visual or sculptural art in our site-specific work.
Practices
Our practices are inspired by the desert environment, postmodern dance, activist art, queer and feminist explorations, contact improvisation and site-specific choreography. Our bodies are in a rich ecology of human, non-human, animate and inanimate objects. Our eco-somatic work moves toward care, community, connection and regeneration.
