Sea Change Within Us
Movement through our water concerns and climate change consequences.
Sea Change Within Us, by Karin Stevens Dance, is a sixty minute performance addressing local Washington state water concerns and climate change consequences through the voices of real people we interviewed, combined with moving rigid structures of water images by dancing human bodies.
Ten dancers move four panels into dynamic configurations to express concerns about rivers and dams, endangered species, ice, ocean and sea-level rise, flooding, migration, Indigenous fishing rights injustice, divisive politics, and human dis/re/connection. Within these turbulent thematic layers, grief is addressed through the real sounds of mother orca Tahlequah’s cries in the “Rivers, Dams, Salmon, Orca” section. Collective awareness is awakened in the section “Descending Pressure” with the repeated phrase from a climate activist-artist, “Our bodies are a source of wisdom.” The performance encourages unification with our ecosystems and throughout difficult content there is contemplation and beauty to support the felt-urgency of our crises.
As a message to disrupt a myopic, singular view point, the audience is invited to view the work from all sides and participate in a simple, guided embodied movement practice to re/connect to a whole-bodied relationship with water and the ensuing performance.
The project was conceived, directed and choreographed by Karin Stevens, with original sound compositions by Kaley Lane Eaton and Jessi Harvey, and large-scale installation by Roger Feldman.
For the 2025 project, we commissioned former Seattle Civic Poet Jourdan Imani Keith to write an original poem for parts of the recreated 2025 sound score.
The sound score includes electronic and acoustic recordings: an original score with string quartet by Harvey*; electronics and sounds from Eaton’s great-great-great-grandparent’s piano that traveled by raft up the Missouri River woven with voices from 2019 interviews conducted through our collaboration with journalist Devi Lockwood’s 1,001 Stories on Water and Climate Change; with new 2025 interviews conducted by Karin Stevens; and commissioned poem by Keith.
Visit HERE, to listen to new 2025 interviews from all over Washington State.
Visit the interactive map of 1,001 Stories on Water and Climate Change to hear the full interviews from 2019 Seattle voices, HERE.
*Alina To - Violin, Rafael Howell - Violin, Heather Bentley - Viola, Rose Bellini - Cello
String Quartet Recorded and edited by Greg Dixon
“I am really happy that I get to interact with people who are not writing for other scholars, but with people who are using different ways of communicating rather than peer reviewed journal articles; who are willing to listen; who are willing to use that information to convey it to people in a way that is not going to put those ideological blinders on and stop the conversation. Thank you for using art. Thank you for narratives for getting the message out. The more ways we use to get the message out the more likely we’ll have an impact…thank you for giving me the opportunity.” -Nives Dolsak, Professor at UW, specializing in Sustainability Science, Climate Change, and Environmental Law; 2019 Interviewee with our 1,001 Stories/Collaboration with journalist Devi Lockwood
#seachangewithinus
It is vital that dance is a resource for re/imagining and re/creating life-affirming relationships with water in us and around us; even when we must move through the concerns and consequences related to our water bodies of rain, cloud, river, urban creek, ocean, ice, glacier, endangered marine life. Can a work of movement art re-narrate the story of the human-as-separate and begin new rhythms back toward interconnected structures of well-being and becoming?
The recreation of this 2019 project is funded by ArtsWA, National Endowment for the Arts, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture/Hope Corps, Earth Creative, and 4Culture.
