Keeping Warm on a Cold Night

Nov 11-Lab 1.0  by Robyn Awend

Guest presenter and dancer Emily Jarrett Hughes joined our recent Lab, keeping us warm on a cold night. Emily is a dancer, teacher, performer, and activist. To begin the evening, Emily had us moving, swaying, and dancing to the sound of water, creating a synergy of flowing movement in the room. 

Building on this we were each given a jar of fresh water to hold, feeling its fluidity along with our movements, leaving droplets of water on the ground beneath our feet. We were invited to take a large refreshing drink of the water before we added our jars to the table in the middle of the space.
 

Once we were warmed up, Emily shared with us the great work that she does with The Culture of Water Leadership Summit which brings together a wide variety of culturally-based music and dance groups to deepen the work being done in the community for water.

From there, Liba led us in a collaborative process painting exercise keeping the connection to water. We partnered up and each group of two painted on a large sheet of white paper, keeping in mind, "what does water say to me." We respectfully painted on our own part of the paper, then on top of each other’s work using images and words.

We reflected on the topic as a large group and then were given a circle cut from watercolor paper to personally reflect on, "what would I say to water." For this particular project we used the jars of water that we danced with earlier to create our individual circles, using paint and markers. We then brought our jars to the table to see what colors were represented as a result of our final creations.We quietly studied each of these colors contained in the clear glass jars creating a mosaic of sorts, and feeling complete.

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