As artists we understand that shifts in the cultural, political, behavioral, and ethical start with change inspired in our hearts and our minds. We beckon this shift through the emotional, multi-sensory, ancestral, spiritual, and imaginal, through performance rituals and movement offerings engaging story, vulnerability, intimacy, and connection. Dancing Earth (DE) (including this project) employs an intergenerational model of collective artist and community-led programming to create environments/experiences that embody the unique essences of cultural perspectives and reimagined artistic counter-cultural movement rituals, while shifting dominant society’s understanding of diasporic identity. 

The Eco Artivism training modules are offered by Rulan Tangen center on the teachings of her newest body of work, Eco Elegies.  At the core of this work are the contemporary expressions of ancient cosmologies, the interweaving of multiple cultures, language, and themes; honoring the sovereign choice of each collaborating artist, especially what and how to share; and the ecological themes which are resonant in their own unique way to each person.

Eco Elegies/Eco Artivism as bridged into community responds uniquely to the ecosystem it is being offered in–responding to time, place, and people, centering the principle of diversity and uplifting embodied wisdoms from the forces of nature and our own bodies. Each ritual is an immersive journey that invites audiences to become active participants in re-connecting to themselves, eachother, and the world, summoning in love, gratitude, wonder and compassion for every life form as part of a sacred ecosystem. 

We’re centering BIPOC collaborators carrying mixed identities (such as ancestry, gender and more) as humans of the “in-between/liminal space” of creation, able to call upon multiplicities and complex relations within/around self, as cooperative strands of creation that remind us as humans of our part as caretakers of this planet.

“Can embodiment, movement and ritual of contemporary dance reveal how to love the worlds around us, between us, and within us? What are the ancient waters that flow between? Can we continue to experience reciprocity by giving and receiving breath? What is the biodiversity of the soil we root in?”

“We find love and understanding of these eco-systemic multiverses in elegiac fullness of grief, sorrow, loss, fear, anger and desire for transformation, hope, and renewal - to become liberated by embracing the interactive purpose and connection of every life form including the fullness of humanity within this sacred cosmos.” - Rulan Tangen, Founding Artistic Director