Photo By Miana Jun
Our Mission
The mission of NWD Projects is to promote dance as a vehicle for social change by increasing awareness of environmental and social issues through collaboration with the artistic, educational and scientific communities. NWD Projects makes use of the internet to create a national community, which offers platforms for educating students and supporting artistic exchange among professional artists, while engaging and informing the public.
As artists, we know that creativity is born from vulnerability: a vulnerability that is fed by questions, by self-evaluation, by new and diverse ideas from those who challenge us as we begin the process necessary to change. NWD Projects commits to this journey of creativity and to the goal of equity for all by supporting diversity in its many forms. We recognize that our present systems are based on inequality and we eagerly step into the work to correct the past structures and find a more balanced future.
NWD Projects is committed to providing disability accommodations for all of our events and performances. We believe that the arts are enhanced and enriched when all community members have the ability to participate. Please contact Dale Andree for more information or to request specific accommodations.
Our Staff
Dale Andree
DIRECTOR
For me, the joy of dancing lies in the beauty of discovery that evolves through deep self-exploration and expansive collaboration. Working with dancers, musicians, visual artists, photographers, and videographers inspires me. My work reflects the contributions of those collaborative efforts. For 15 years I directed Mary Street Dance Theatre. As I choreographed and toured with the company my methods of composition gradually turned more and more to improvisation. With my young daughter Thryn Saxon, I organized and directed The Good for Something Dancers, a children’s dance company based on improvisation. For over 20 years I taught at New World School of the Arts creating projects and choreographic opportunities with the students, particularly site-specific work. It is there that I conceived of National Water Dance. Inspired by the work of Rudolf Laban’s “movement choirs” I first wanted to connect the dancers across the state of Florida through its waterways. From there it became a national project bringing me deeper and deeper into environmental activism. This quest has taken me from the mudflats of Maine, creating two dance films there; to the Everglades, experiencing this national treasure as an artist in residence through AIRIE and creating multiple works in its sawgrass plains and cypress sloughs; to the mangrove forests that support the coastal lands around Miami. In 2023, I presented Dancing Out of Time: An Environmental Dance Film Festival and Thryn and I established an artist residency in Maine, offering artists the inspiration of the natural surroundings and challenging them to connect with the local community. I deeply believe in the knowledge of the body and the memory that it holds. I believe that it is through our bodies that we find the real connection to ourselves, to one another and to the world we inhabit.
Kristin O’Neal
OUTREACH COORDINATOR
Residing in Atlanta, GA, I perform a bit, teach a lot and choreograph when the spirit moves me. My contemporary modern technique classes include a deep investigation into how one’s body operates within a movement framework that invites curiosity, discovery and always one’s relationship to space and time. Sustainability and efficiency are deeply considered in my dance and movement practice. By considering the amount of muscular effort needed to fulfill a movement I enjoy sharing this mode of efficiency on a regular basis with students at Emory University as well as with the Atlanta Dance and Contact Improvisation communities.
My role as Outreach Coordinator for National Water Dance supports my sustainable dancing lifestyle by highlighting dance as our vehicle to take action on the water crisis in our country. I find pleasure in mobilizing folx to take action on climate change and fight for environmental justice while sharing the joy of dancing with audiences.
I spend my summers at the Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, ME dancing and working as the Box Office Manager for the live performance series where the front of house team prides itself on paperless ticketing as well as electronic programs.
On occasion, I will create a solo dance based loosely on the life of one of my great aunts or grandmothers, always with a recycled costume and typically donning one of their personal handkerchiefs, brooch, or clip earrings.
Finally, I earned a couple of dance degrees that can often feel insignificant; however, they fueled me with a life-long practice of dancing and engagement with a community of humans who continue to inspire me to research and evolve.
Rachel Calabrese
SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR
Rachel Calabrese is a freelance dancer and choreographer residing in New York City. She attended Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University where she received her BFA in Dance. She has had the opportunity to work with choreographers: Shannon Gillen, Kimberly Bartosik, Christian Von Howard, and Alexandra beller, amongst others. She has a passion for physical dance theater and finding new ways to show the inner workings of the mind within dance. She is currently a company member with Artichoke Dance Company and Finleigh Zack Dance in NYC, and is the artistic director of her own company (NewBrese Dance Project) along with co – director Sawyer Newsome. Rachel is super excited to be a part of the NWD projects team!