Walkabout: Remembering Water’s Way, with Dance Exchange

Culminating a year of research and artmaking at the Schuylkill Center, Dance Exchange will lead a series of animated hikes on our trails that connect participants to local ecology and reflect on the ways that water shapes our lives.  These hour-long experiences will weave together performance, installation, science engagements, and other opportunities, surfacing concerns and questions about the Schuylkill River and local waterways, and contributing to our understandings about the impacts of climate change on the region.

Executive Artistic Director of Dance Exchange Cassie Meador is collaborating with a multidisciplinary team of artists and scientists (Elizabeth Johnson, Jame McCray, and Zeke Leonard, along with Schuylkill Center staff) and a cohort of local artists to create this unique interdisciplinary event.

The guided walk will descend some elevation; good walking shoes are recommended.

Performances will take place at the following times:

October 13 from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

October 13 from 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

October 14 from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

October 14 from 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Dance Exchange is a Takoma Park, MD-based non-profit arts organization committed to dancemaking and creative practices that engage individuals and communities of all ages to cultivate a deeper understanding of themselves and their world, and to open up the questions at the heart of their lives. Founded in 1976 by Liz Lerman and under the artistic direction of Cassie Meador since 2011, Dance Exchange creates dances by asking four questions: Who gets to dance? Where is the dance happening? What is it about?  Why does it matter? For the past decade, much of Dance Exchange’s work has focused on the intersection of the arts and sciences and has resulted in collaborations between scientists in the fields of biology, physics, ecology, genetics and more.

This program is presented as part of the Schuylkill Center’s LandLab residency. LandLab integrates artistic creation, ecological restoration and education. A joint project of the Schuylkill Center and the Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), LandLab offers resources and space on our 340-acre wooded property for artists to engage audiences in the processes of ecological stewardship through scientific investigation and artistic creation. LandLab residents create art-based installations that prevent or remediate environmental damage while raising public awareness about our local ecology.