Introduction
Emily Wright with Cumulus Dance presents a site-responsive performance in Charlottesville, Virginia. The work engages an artistic inquiry into water, embodiment, and place, foregrounding movement as a mode of ecological attention and care.
Site and Ancestral Land
The project takes place at the Botanical Garden of the Piedmont, situated on ancestral land. The location informs both choreography and research, inviting audiences to notice the entangled relationships between bodies, plant communities, and local hydrology.
Water Issues and Creative Response
We are dancing in Virginia at a time when water sustainability feels both urgent and intimate. The work responds to groundwater depletion, intensive water use by data centers, and contamination from PFAS, industrial discharge, sewage sludge, road salt, and agricultural runoff. It also reflects regional efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay amid persistent nutrient and sediment pollution, and the disproportionate impacts of aging infrastructure and legacy coal ash on marginalized communities. As climate change intensifies flooding and erosion, wetlands and waterways are being reshaped; the choreography responds by rendering porous, permeable, and entangled states of being.
Theoretical Frame and Practice
Inspired by Stacy Alaimo’s concept of transcorporeality, the performance seeks to re-member performers and audiences as waterbodies—participants in flows that connect aquifers, streams, and tidal systems. Movement practices emphasize permeability, listening, and material reciprocity with the site.
Collaboration
This work is presented in collaboration with the Botanical Garden of the Piedmont and Cumulus Dance, bringing together botanical stewardship and contemporary dance practice to articulate communal responses to water crises.
Social Media
Follow for updates and further context:
- @emilywrightdance
- @cumulus_dance
- @botanicalgardenofthepiedmont