A NEW MOVEMENT: Global Water Dances gets local

The Centre for Dance & The Performing Arts has partnered with Friends of Lake Apopka to participate in the Global Water Dances event for the first time. 

“Every year I have wanted to support it and to have my dancers participate (in it),” CDPA owner, teacher and director Kathryn Austin said of the event. “But, every year, it fell on our dance recital weekend. When I saw that in 2023, (Global Water Dances) was going to be the weekend after our dance recital, I was like: ‘OK, this is the year.”

The event, which happens every two years, seeks to promote community awareness about the need for healthy, clean water and possible water issues happening in communities around the world. 

“Global Water Dances began as a collective idea of an international group of individuals, certified by the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, with decades of experience in producing Movement Choirs: events that use community dance to create social cohesion through non-verbal communication,” according to its website. “We connect and support a global community of choreographers and dancers to inspire action and international collaboration for water issues through the universal language of dance.” 

GLOBAL WATER DANCES

Since the first Global Water Dances event in 2011, more than 55 locations around the world have joined the movement.

“It’s all these different site choreographers who on the same day, June 10, will — at their location — do something in their community that promotes this awareness of healthy water or water issues,” Austin said. “For us specifically, it’s going to mean that we are going to be at Magnolia Park and on the lake side that just following COVID-19 has been really refortified. It’s super beautiful.” 

Courtesy photo by Ansa du Toit

To provide a deeper connection between those in attendance and the water, multi-faceted teacher and drummer of culture percussive techniques Mark DeMaio will welcome spectators with the sound of drums.

In addition, Tai Chi instructor Sonya Dumas will lead a Qigong flow for anyone who would like to join, followed by a Tai Chi performance. Sacred dancer and sound and energy healer Amy Anthony then will perform a cleansing of the space while honoring the water. 

“Then our dancers will be performing a dance that was derived from really thinking about how any lake, but (especially) our Lake Apopka in particular should be a place where people come to the water’s edge and play — and don’t have to feel like there is a reason that they shouldn’t be in the water (because) it should be a place where you feel safe,” Austin said.

Fourteen dancers from CDPA will perform a dance that touches on how the hydrilla  — an aquatic plant that can grow in various conditions — can disrupt water flow in reservoirs, hampers drainage and irrigation canals, and also can decrease oxygen in water. 

After that dance, the Global Water Dance will follow. 

“That is the dance that everybody around the world has learned and will do,” Austin said. “It (represents) the idea of unity around the world, no matter what your (water) issues are, no matter what your space is, there is that sense of unity — almost like giving all water this great big hug around the world.” 

Some movements included in the Global Water Dance are based on the idea of catching raindrops, as the dance starts with a feeling of needing water. 

“They ask that the dancers explore what it would be like to be dehydrated or to be without water and for the ground to be crunchy because it doesn’t have any water,” Austin said. “Then, to feel a drop of rain and that hopefulness that comes with that drop of rain whenever you are going through a drought. … And then catching that drop and being mindful of every little drop that comes together to make something that you could drink or wash your face with, and also reminds us that every person is like a rain drop and you collect them all together and you can do something purposeful.” 

The dance also includes ocean-like movements such as waves circling and the cupping of the hands again while lifting them up and letting the water fall all over you as a symbol of connection and hope. 

“At the end, we invite the audience to do just some simple gestures that kind of bring us all into awareness and accountability to understand that water is about cleansing our bodies,” Austin said. “But also, we need that water as a life source and so, to make us all walk away and remember (and be mindful) of whatever is happening with the lake that is central to our community.”