A Climate Dance Under the Whale
The famous home of a polar bear diorama and a 94-foot-long blue whale will host a dance performance for the first time this week.
From Wednesday to Friday, the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History will be the stage for "On the Nature of Things," a piece about climate change created by choreographer Karole Armitage in collaboration with Paul Ehrlich, the author of “The Population Bomb.”
“Everybody loves the Museum of Natural History,” said Armitage. “Those dioramas, I mean, every kid, it's their favorite place in New York City. So this is absolutely the place where we can make an event. Something unlike anything that has ever been done.”
Climate change is a complex and political topic, but it can be hard to translate it with dance, an abstract art form. Yet Armitage said she just felt she had to do it. “I love nature and it gives me so much inspiration and solace,” she said. “Also I really wanted to bring emotion to science, because the scientists are so frustrated that they've given all these facts for 30 years and it hadn't made any change on behavior.”
She doesn't want to be preachy though. “For me it's much more a philosophical journey,” she said. “It's not telling anyone what to think or feel, but it's giving an opportunity for reflection.”
The piece begins in harmony, falls into chaos and returns to harmony. It will be performed by 30 dancers from the Armitage Gone! Dance company, with music by five different composers – including Philip Glass and John Luther Adams. Ehrlich will read live excerpts from “The Population Bomb” and five kids from Manhattan Youth Ballet will participate at the end.
Rob DeSalle, a curator in the museum’s division of invertebrate zoology, thinks artists can help people understand science because they bring a different approach to a complex topic. “I think this piece is very emotional and it has a great message to it and a great narrative to it.” he said.
Armitage might be the perfect choreographer to do it. As a teenager, she spent summers living in the wilderness in Colorado, where her father, a biologist, was doing research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.
“I was just lucky to grow up in this environment and of course that helped me to love science and to love nature, because I saw extraordinary examples of how to think about it,” she said.
The museum has had a few performances by artists recently, like cellist Yo-Yo Ma and playwright Anna Deavere Smith. But it's still a new thing for the institution, explained Ruth Cohen, a senior director in the education department.
“We are going to see what happens. We are going to see who comes, what they gain from it, how great the appetite is for more,” she said.
The audience will watch it from above, surrounding the hall. If Karole Armitage succeeds, they will leave thinking about the thin ice outside the glass box of the polar bear diorama.
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