Artists for the earth
Performing Arts

MUSIC
The earliest humans used music to express feelings and ideas about their common experiences in the natural environment they shared. Music was a tool to ensure survival through cooperation.
This spirit of cooperation is alive today. Whether in orchestras, folk music, hip hop, reggae, rap or rock, music allows us to build bridges across countries, cultures and continents and share messages that bind and make cohesive a sense of community and understanding of our shared concerns.
Today, music helps to bring us together in our collective concern for the environment and the future of our planet.
John Luther Adams won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for his work Become Ocean, a piece about rising sea levels brought on by climate change. Indian composer and Earth Day Ambassador, Ricky Kej’s album Shanti Samsara was launched in 2015 at the UN Climate Conference with hundreds of performers and artists collaborating on the production. Rocky Dawuni is a Ghanaian singer, songwriter, producer a UN Goodwill Ambassador and humanitarian activist. His newest album Beats of Zion is a call for positivity and global unity. Luke Bedford’s Seven Angels is a modern chamber opera. The composer has said about his opera, “We (with librettist Glyn Maxwell) knew we wanted to use Paradise Lost as a template in some way and to bring out the issues of climate change and environmental destruction.” Forest by Tansy Davis is a piece about finding a way of listening to the world around us; to a forest imagined in music, to hear what it might have to say about our current predicament as humans in a dramatically changing environment Vincent Ho, the Canadian composer wrote Arctic Symphony after visiting the Arctic in 2008. In the finale he aimed to bring together science and the elders of the Inuit. One of the first female artists in Mauritania, the acclaimed singer Malouma, uses her celebrity to address the environment as IUCN Goodwill Ambassador to the nations of Central and West Africa. To protect the rain forests of their native Brazil from further destruction, artists Caetano Veloso and Lenine, Criolo, Emicida and Pretinho da Serrinha – along with other Brazilian musicians came together in Rio de Janeiro’s Floresta da Tijuca to create a music film and the original composition, “I’m Alive: The Floresta da Tijuca Sessions.”

DANCE
Perhaps no other art expresses a narrative as viscerally as dance. With vibrant visual enactments and symbolic gestures, the dancers’ movements resonate with audiences, compelling them to decipher the meaning and grasp the message.
Touched by the emotive aspects of the dance, audiences can be moved and their understanding lead to deeper engagement with climate change. Around the world, dancers and choreographers are collaborating to get across the story of the environment and to build momentum for positive change.
Diana Movieus’s Glacier: A Climate Change Ballet creates an onstage Arctic environment where the threat of polar icecap collapse is set to movement by dancers with live video projections. ODC is a dance company founded by Brenda Way. Their program Embodying Climate Change is a repertory of works about climate change that includes Dead Reckoning, Uncertain Weather, and Unintended Consequences. Corey Baker teamed up with Royal New Zealand Ballet dancer Madeleine Graham and Director Jacob Bryant to perform Antarctica Live, a ground-breaking dance-film project inspired by Antarctica highlighting the threats of climate change. Lynn Neuman is the director of ARTICHOKE DANCE COMPANY. Artichoke Dance offers unique public performances and educational art experiences to help people become more physically, socially, and environmentally conscious. DAVALOIS FEARON DANCE is a New York dance company formed by the Dancer of the same name. Her choreography explores topics related to the environment such as Consider Water inspired by domestic and global water issues. SAPPHIRE DANCE CREATION’S work entitled Ekonama: The Beginning in the End revolves around a tribal community that lives in seclusion and depends on their gods for protection. On a fateful day, a storm brought by climate change hits the earth, the sea levels rise to bring the end of humanity including the community whose gods fail to protect them. MARRUGEKU is an intercultural dance company of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians that bridges urban and remote dance communities. Cut the Sky is set in the future around a group of climate refugees facing extreme weather events. Spector Dance's Ocean Trilogy is their multidisciplinary performance and education outreach program that highlights innovations and possibilities from cutting-edge ocean research.

THEATRE
The intent of Theatre from the time of the ancient Greeks was to mirror society through dramatic action. As the conflict is played out, an audience sees itself portrayed, its emotions become engaged and it is challenged to reflect on the action.
Confronted today with the most dramatic and fundamental conflict that exists – many notable plays are being written and performed as playwrights, directors and theatres coalesce around the problem of the environment and climate change.
Sea Sick by the science writer Alanna Mitchell is a monologue about the effect of climate change on the ocean. Andrew Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling tackles family and climate change within a time-traveling story. The Amazing Stars Arts Academy (ASAA) an arts theatre group in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe has, in partnership with the Zimbabwe Development Democracy Trust, participated in a climate change advocacy project. Under the Sal Tree Festival – Inside a Sal Forest in Assam’s Goalpara tribal district in India, a series of plays in a 3-day festival is held every year in December. A unique format of contemporary theatre in India – it is an eco-friendly idea where artists work in harmony in nature. The Great Immensity from the Civilians features some hilariously depressing tunes about the decaying state of the world and its beleaguered creatures, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman. The first play of The Arctic Cycle, Sila examines the competing interests shaping the future of the Canadian Arctic and local Inuit population through puppetry, spoken word poetry and three different languages (English, French & Inuktitut). In 1986 in Orissa, India, a theatre village called Natya Gram, and a socially committed theatre company called Natya Chetana was founded by Subodh Patnaik. Plays are inspired by Indian traditional, folk, and puppet theatre with the mission to help social changes
related to real conflicts of villages including climate change.ResourceAfrica UK initiated a community theatre project in the marginalized northeastern area of South Africa suffering from the effects of climate change. Its mission was to support village scenario planning by raising awareness of the impacts of climate change and facilitate discussion.
Join artists for the earth
Share your artwork, events, exhibitions, programs or performances and join other artists from around the world.