Global Water Dances

Dancing for safe water everywhere

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For Choreographers


This page contains resources for you to help you through the process of creating your site-specific dance. The first step is to subscribe to our Newsletter as a Choreographer or a Site Leader. Then, please register your location with the Event Site Registration Form. Follow our Facebook page and join our GWD Choreographers Facebook group

About our 2021 event

The pandemic has imposed challenges for us all.  We hope that many sites will be able to accommodate live performances, but it is also likely that local health agencies will forbid such large gatherings, even ones held outdoors.  As artists and environmentalists, we are experts in adapting to challenges: to use limits to deepen our work. For this year’s GWD, we are shifting from live performance with huge gatherings to using technology to safely build communities of artists and activists.  

February to April: GWD 2021 Webinar Series

In the past we have gathered on Zoom to share questions and experiences. We will continue these meetings, and in addition, we will include workshops that will provide concrete tools and lectures by experts that will be inspiring. Check our Webinar YouTube Playlist to watch all our webinars!

GWD Festival 2021

These are options for you! You don’t need to participate in all our activities! Decide if you want to pre-record a film, perform live with an audience, or via Zoom. Choose what is better for you, your dancers, and your audience! What counts is where your heart is at, and your love for dance and water!

June 8: GWD Splash Mob

Help us open our Festival by joining in our Social Media challenge: Be part of the GWD Splash Mob! We will post a 1-minute dance video that everybody will be able to perform, as a solo, duet, or group! You can do it live, or upload your film precisely on the day of June 8th, the World Ocean Day, on your own Instagram or Facebook account with the hashtag #GWDSplashMob2021.

Last year, during the pandemic, we asked our GWD choreographers to submit their splash movements to create a dance with ten of their movements picked up by lottery. Now you can see the final Splash Mob choreography! Watch the solo version danced by Natasha Alhadeff-Jones, and here the video with the original choreographers!

The music was composed by Shari Lauter, an excerpt of the wonderful “Let’s clean it up” music for GWD Cincinnati in 2013. Download music here and follow our social media to be part of this event on GWD Instagram and GWD Facebook. For more information about how to go live, click here: Facebook | Instagram

June 9-11: GWD Online Film Showing

If you would like to participate in Global Water Dances’ first ever Online Film Showing, click here for more details. Your dance will be featured as a premiere in our Youtube Channel. The deadline: videos must be received by 11:59 PM EDT on May 30th 2021.  The Online Film Showing schedule is To Be Determined, according to the number of submissions we receive. Stay tuned in early June for when YOUR dance will be shown! Click here to go to the Film Submission Form.

June 12: GWD On-site Live-streaming

During this time of pandemic, perhaps there are sites that are authorized by local health agencies, to perform outdoors with their group. These events can be live-streamed. You can include the Sections I, II, III, IV. As in previous years, live-streamed performances will be shown on our FaceBook page. Details for LiveStreaming will be coming soon.

Please record your dance and send us the edited film of your performance by June 30, 2021 in order to be included in our compilation of performances!

  • Section I. Ritual: An opening, specific to each site.
  • Section II. Local Dance: It is open to the choreographer’s creativity. You can use locally-based music, and use a local water issue as a theme for your dance.
  • Section III. Global Dance: Simultaneous choreography done by all the performers worldwide to the same piece of music, connecting participants and audience globally. Download music | Read the Written Score | Video Solo Version: Front View | Back View | Video of Group version coming soon.
  • Section IV. Participatory Dance: Audience participation in a very simple movement sequence. Some sites will teach the moves right during the event, while at other sites the audience will have learned prior to performance. Video | Music (optional, you can use any music, or no music!)

June 13: GWD Synchronous Global Dance and Participatory Dance

To conclude our festival, we will be gathering online to perform the new 5-minute version of Section III, the Global Dance, and Section IV the Participatory Dance. We hope everyone will join us for this Synchronous Celebration via Zoom. There will be two different meetings to accommodate different timezones: at 9am CET (Berlin Time), and 3pm EDT (New York time).  This day offers our community a time to connect and celebrate together, no matter their location: outdoors, indoors, in group, or by yourself! Zoom invitations will be sent in May to registered site leaders. Here the media information for you to practice prior to that day:

Download music | Read the Written Score | Video Solo Version: Front View | Back View

Important Details to make your GWD experience a great success

  • Embody Water: Moving as one mind/body has potency. At some point in our dance, everyone becomes water, river, stream, ocean, puddle. Working on consciousness and action is important.
  • Include actions: Take on the issues needed in your community, including politics. Past models have included petitions, call to action, and causes.
  • Partner up: work with environmentally related organizations for speakers and taking collections or helping charities related to water: charity:water, theglobalfund.org, among others. We can help you to find the right match!
  • Include Movement Choirs: If you would like to have some ideas about how develop your own site specific performance, please read this Modern Day Movement Choirs Document.

Publicity Tools

Video and Photo instructions

Funding Opportunities

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