Global Water Dances advocates for clean and affordable water through dance

Kaley Richard
Fri, 07 Apr 2023 01:54:43 +0000
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Global Water Dances will be hosting three H2O Danceworks performances Friday and Saturday. Credit: Courtesy of Scott Ciulei

Safe and clean water is at the heart of the Wexner Center for the Arts’ upcoming choreographer’s showcase H2O Danceworks.

Global Water Dances is an international initiative that advocates for safe and clean water, Loren Bucek — Ohio State alumna, founder, director and cultural producer of Global Water Dances in Columbus — said. Using dance to bring the community together, the group’s H2O Danceworks event Friday and Saturday at the Wexner Center for the Arts involves 11 Columbus choreographers whose pieces feature water as the main theme.

“It isn’t only about one specific sector in the community, nor is it one particular art or discipline,” Bucek said. “So, even though the mission started with it being dance, it’s now become people come together in a community for safe and clean water”

There will be three H2O Danceworks performances, one on Friday at 8 p.m. and two on Saturday at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Global Water Dances is not seeking to raise money, Bucek said, but rather to bring people together.

“It’s also helping people make connections to make change, positive change to heal and protect our natural resource, water, because without it we don’t live,” Bucek said.

An immersive dance workshop, “Connecting the Body to the Natural World,” will be hosted by Global Water Dances in Columbus April 13 as well, according to the Wexner Center’s website.

Global Water Dances Columbus pairs with choreographers and dancers to advocate for its cause. Since last year, it’s been working with the Ohio State’s College for Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences to advocate for clean water through art of all forms, Bucek said. They’ve also partnered with Friends of the Olentangy Watershed) theSolid Waste Authority of Central Ohio and many others, Bucek said.

Ohio State alumni, former and current faculty are involved in the performance.

Sarah Hixon, Ohio State alum and Director of Hixon Dance Company, will perform an excerpt from a longer work “Like the Hidden Tide.”

“I am sort of taking stories from other mythologies – particularly Greek mythology – and exploring what that means in those stories,” Hixon said. “We are looking in this piece at the story of Syrinx, which is a nymph who is transformed into water reeds in order to escape the God, Pan.”

Columbus artists Xclaim Dance Company, LP & Dancers, Tapestry Performing Arts Company, Mansee Singhi at MKDC, Brother(hood) Dance! and Oyo Dance Company will also perform, Bucek said.

“We’re going to use our art for this kind of activism, and I think, ‘What better thing can you be doing with it in the world we live in?’” Hixon said.

Global Water Dances in Columbus started working on H2O Danceworks about a year ago, and the idea was for everyone to be independent but collaborative, Bucek said.

“I wanted everybody to retain their own identity in their own company work and be able to have their own seasons, but then find that they had a larger cause that they could be part of,” Bucek said. “I couldn’t think of anything larger than surviving and thriving and having water be one of the pieces that helped us do that.”

Tickets for the performance range from $6-24, which are available to purchase on the Wexner Center’s website.