Global Water Dances: Following flows inside and alongside our bodies of water

11 Apr 2018

Dr. Róisín O’Gorman
Department of Theatre
12 April, 1-2 PM, Aras na Laoi G18

This talk discusses how movement based practices activate and embody a sensibility and awareness of how water moves both inside and alongside the human body. This approach troubles the mainstream understand of water as commodity or external force and can potentially shift our perceptions of issues around water rights and public management of water. Following and troubling ideas from new materialism and (hydro)feminist theories, Bennett, Neimanis and Haraway in particular, this talk offers a theoretical framework and critical reflection on a practice-as-research based community project which connected a local Cork based group (which involved children, professional dancers, a teenage youth theatre group, and international students and local community members) within the Global Water Dances (GWD) project (http://globalwaterdances.org/). GWD seeks to connect specific local communities and issues with a larger scale global sensibility by raising awareness about water issues through dance as a shared expressive form. This paper will contextualize and examine the GWD event alongside other community arts practices focused on water (Sing for Water and Hydrocitizenship for example) and consider questions arising out of the GWD large scale project (over 100 sites participated globally in 2017). The event allowed us to focus our concerns which began in response to particular protests around austerity and water rights current in Ireland but which also allowed us to connect this water-rich and overflowing country in counter-point to a number of global sites and issues. Our aim was to think and move with water and each other and to contribute to a shifting sensibility about water as central to issues of social justice as much as an issue of environmental concern.

Image from Cork, Ireland, Global Water Dances, 2017. Part of Cork Midsummer Festival. (Image by Inma Pavon)

See also: http://research.ucc.ie/profiles/A027/rogorman Email: r.ogorman@ucc.ie

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