Dance For World Community

I rarely write about work but am pretty excited about last week's events. Every year we host the Dance for World Community Festival, a week-long event bringing together local dance groups, teachers, and social service agencies to perform, teach, and talk about their work. All free and open to the public. Our Founder's vision is that dance can play a much larger role in improving our communities than is traditionally felt possible. The organization has been partnering with other members of the local dance community for years, creating a strong coalition of dancers and folks related to dance that, much like any network brought together by a common goal, has the power to create change. 

I believe in what he's doing. I really do. But it wasn't until we hosted an event last week around climate change that I really understood the project. We're good at assembling people who we contact through our network, whether they are audience members, local community members, dancers, etc. Why not gather these people on behalf of an important issue? And arguably, climate change is one of the MOST important. So we recruited Dr. Cameron Wake from UNH (you might remember that I was inspired at a conversation with him a few months back) to give a presentation about his latest research and talk about how the arts can play a role. About 25 people joined us. It's a start.

I'm just blown away by the fact that I work in a place that bothers to do things like this. Being able to connect my passion for equity and climate change to my job is really neat. And being able to use my job to increase my own awareness of the ways we can address them is just mind blowing when you think this is ballet we're talking about. Ballet! I'll try to remember this sentiment the next time I want to pull my hair out at my desk. :)