Join the Movement!

Dance builds community for water solutions

On June 15, 2019, communities around the world will share a dance work set in a locale that is close to water and that best enables them to highlight a specified local water issue. Choreographers, dance groups, organizations, water activists and members of the community will be encouraged to find ways to take action to solve their immediate water problems.
Our worldwide event, linked throughout the day via broadcast media and the internet, will challenge countless observers, locally and online, to deepen their understanding about the importance of water in human communities.
If you are a choreographer or water activist, we invite you to work with the people in your own home city or town to drive a process that builds up collaboration with a wide range of artists, scientists, and environmental activists.

Interested? Please Sign Up!

Or to find the locale that is closest to you please visit our Locations Map.

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.
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.

About the Event

Each dance will be performed on June 24th at a time and location determined by the local choreographers. Each group will produce a 4-part site-specific performance; the first two parts local and latter two global:

Section I. Ritual: An opening ceremony specific to each site.

Section II. Local Dance: A dance created by choreographers from that area, using locally-based music, around specified local issues with water.

Section III. Global Dance: Simultaneous choreography done by all the performers worldwide to the same piece of music, connecting participants and audience globally.

Section IV. Participatory Dance: Audience participation in a very simple movement sequence. Some sites will teach the moves right during this Finale, while at other sites the audience will have learned prior to performance.

The music for the latter two sections can be downloaded from the For Choreographers page, and you can watch the video and see the words written out for the choreographic score. If you want some ideas about how develop your own site specific performance please read this Modern Day Movement Choirs Document.

Global Water Dances Initiative – “Dancing for Safe Water Everywhere”

Global Water Dances is a bold visionary artistic initiative first launched in June 2011 and focused on the critical need for safe drinking water. Already today, there are an estimated 5 million deaths per year globally from polluted water. By 2025, over half the world’s population will be facing water-related problems. (See Water Issues page for more info.)

The initiators of Global Water Dances are an international network of dance and non-verbal communication experts. In working with local choreographers around the world, we draw on Rudolf Laban and Irmgard Bartenieff’s practices with human movement to mirror the universe’s dynamic patterns. Using Laban’s technique of Movement Choirs, the choreographers create dances which will not only move the participants, but also the observers. See About Us to know more about the organizers.