Dance Resources

Flow, the medium of dance/movement, can connect community, just as water connects people. Communities grew up and were often defined by the water nearby. Movement also provides an embodied practice for community-building and can foster new understandings and behaviors. Through Global Water Dances we want to connect the local to the global community to safeguard that all humans have access to clean drinking water, so that the water flowing through us is sustaining and not harming us. Taking responsibility for, valuing and protecting water can shift people easily into other ways of caring for the planet.

Global Water Dances raises the awareness of participants and observers about the importance of water, and provides a model for empowering local communities to take action. The Global Water Dances event brings local environmental experts and organizations, artists and members of the community together in a process that can build ongoing collaborations.

The activities in Global Water Dances will be simple; creating bonds using time, space and rhythm. The dances are professionally choreographed and people of all ages and abilities from the local communities participate. Each dance event reflects in its own way the importance of water locally and in the eco-systems we share world-wide.

Here some other dance resources that reinforces why dance is important in our everyday life.

Selected Bibliography: Ways dance activates community

  • Demos AP, Chaffin R, Begosh KT, Daniels JR, Marsh KL. 2012 Rocking to the beat: effects of music and partner’s movements on spontaneous interpersonal coordination. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 141, 49 – 53. (doi:10.1037/a0023843)
  • Ehrenreich B. 2008 Dancing in the streets: a history of collective joy. New York, NY: Metropolitan.
  • Hove MJ, Risen JL. 2009 It’s all in the timing: interpersonal synchrony increases affiliation. Soc. Cogn. 27, 949– 961. (doi:10.1521/soco.2009. 27.6.949)
  • Pratt, C. 2017 “Together We Move: Creating a Laban-style movement choir.” In The Oxford Book of Dance and Well-Being. Oxford University Press online 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199949298.001.0001
  • Reddish P, Fischer R, Bulbulia J. 2013 Let’s dance together: synchrony, shared intentionality and cooperation. PLoS ONE 8, e71182. (doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0071182)
  • Reddish P, Bulbulia J, Fischer R. 2014 Does synchrony promote generalized prosociality? Religion Brain Behav. 4, 3– 19. (doi:10.1080/ 2153599X.2013.764545)
  • Tarr B., Launay J., Cohen E., Dunbar R. 2015 Synchrony and exertion during dance independently raise pain threshold and encourage social bonding. 01 October 2015 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2015.0767
  • Tarr B, Launay J, Dunbar RIM. 2014 Music and social bonding: ‘self – other’ merging and neurohormonal mechanisms. Front. Psychol. Audit Cogn. Neurosci. 5, 1– 10. (doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01096)
  • Valdesolo P, Desteno D. 2011 Synchrony and the social tuning of compassion. Emotion 11, 262– 266. (doi:10.1037/a0021302)
  • Wiltermuth SS, Heath C. 2009 Synchrony and cooperation. Psychol. Sci. 20, 1– 5. (doi:10.1111/j. 1467-9280.2008.02253)

Videos of Movement Choirs and Site Specific Dance

Water Choreography

Traditional water uses and rituals

Water Music

Water photographs

Jamie McHugh: Nature Being Art (see ‘Galleries’)

Embodied Terrain by Narelle Carter-Quinlan, Australian dance maker, photographer and writer whose work focuses on the felt relationship of the tissues of the body and the experience of Place as embodied visceral encounter. Her images contain codes of consciousness – direct transmissions of knowing and wholeness.

Political activism

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. Auden, “First Things First”

If you have any other dance resource to share, feel free to email us to info@globalwaterdances.org