NWD Projects presents the Live-Streamed 5th Bi-Annual National Water Dance

Desert Dance Theatre is participating in this annual nationwide event for its 2nd time. We are honored to be a part of this meaningful event. NOTE: 1 pm Arizona time is 4 pm Eastern Time. 

On Saturday, April 23, at 4 pm EST (1 pm Arizona time) dancers across the United States from Seattle to Mississippi, from Maine to Miami will join together in a nationwide simultaneous dance event at water sites, rural and urban, remote and public, bringing attention to our need to be accountable for the water that sustains us. National Water Dance is an artist-driven collective of dancers, students, educators and community members who create simultaneous performances across the country. We invite everyone to come dance with us and engage in the actions on climate change that will help bring us back into balance with this precious planet that we all call home.

This year we are excited to welcome Felipe Barral and IGNI Productions who will be live streaming sites all over the country. The live stream will begin at 3:30pm EST (12:30 pm AZ time) with interviews and information about many of the participating organizations as well as environmental issues and a peek into participants’ creative processes. The performance will begin exactly at 1 pm AZ time, 4 pm EST.  

To view the live stream go to:
https://www.nwdprojects.org/national-water-dance/

Collective action is the only answer to climate change. It’s not one community’s problem. There is no place to run. We are…

RUNNING OUT OF TIME… THE TIME IS NOW…

Join Us on April 23, 2022!

NWD Projects is proud to be the organizing institution for National Water Dance nationwide. National Water Dance is a biennial event comprised of an artist-driven collective of dancers, students, educators, and community members who create simultaneous performances across the United States. The 5th National Water Dance will take place on April 23, 2022 at 4 pm EST (AZ Time – 1 pm). The theme and title for this year is “Dancing Out of Time.”

National Water Dance

The mission of NWD Projects is to promote dance as a vehicle for social change by increasing awareness of environmental and social issues through collaboration with the artistic, educational and scientific communities. NWD Projects makes use of the internet to create a national community, which offers platforms for educating students and supporting artistic exchange among professional artists, while engaging and informing the public.

As artists we know that creativity is born from conflict: conflict that is fed by questions, by self-evaluation, by new and diverse ideas from those who challenge us as we begin the process necessary to change. NWD Projects commits to this journey of creativity and to the goal of equity for all by supporting diversity in its many forms. We recognize that our present systems are based on inequality and we eagerly step into the work to correct the past structures and find a more balanced future.

We are honored and privileged to be able to do this work on lands that have been cared for by many indigenous communities of the past, present, and future. We encourage you to learn more about those people whose lands you occupy, to learn about their environmental priorities, and to do your best to support policies that integrate those conservation principles.

Climate Change

We see it everywhere with flooding, drought, unsafe water. How do we begin to address such an overwhelming problem? Perhaps we see ourselves in the fortunate position where climate change isn’t affecting our daily life, but just as nature’s ecosystems are based on a healthy codependency so are our communities, urban or rural are based on the same. Climate gentrification, fires, floods are not just one community’s problem. It is a displacement of people, contributors to the viability of their specific landscape and of whole communities with cultures and histories that form our communal understanding of place. Their displacement has ripple effects on all of us. Their displacement is the precursor to the ultimate changes in the lives of the rest of us. Collective action is the only answer to climate change. It’s not one community’s problem. There is no place to run.

Running Out of Time

We believe as dancers that one of the starting points comes with the physical understanding of our connection to the Earth; a connection that exists whether surrounded by forests or open fields or urban sidewalks; a connection that begets gratitude and a gratitude that begets reciprocity; what the Earth gives us we, in turn, should equally give back to the Earth.

Strengthening our physical connection to the Earth strengthens how we connect to ourselves and how we connect to one another, which ultimately shapes the future that holds us all.

Event History

Event History

National Water Dance is a catalyst that encourages ongoing engagement between dance and the environment. Beginning in 2011 as a statewide project in Florida, it now boasts 65 locations across the United States—in 2018 including Puerto Rico for the first time. With each event National Water Dance recommits itself to the effort of increasing purposeful awareness to drive action on environmental issues, specifically climate change. Supporting the work of participants beyond our biannual event, National Water Dance spreads the word on the environmental issues they are tackling through monthly newsletters and social media. Our goal is to realize the power of dance as an engine of social change.