Choreographer and educator Ashley Lobo hopes the citizens of Earth will use the World Environment Day to address climate change and create a collective movement of thought and action to restore the planet to health. Today, during the observance of World Environment Day, among the innumerable events that would be held globally, Ashley would be joining four international choreographers for the world premiere of his piece, Y Zero, that he created for Company | E as part of their latest edition of NEXT: WARMER performances at the Fabian Barnes Theater, the Dance Institute of Washington.
Other choreographers include Emese Nagy (Hungary), Robert Rubama and Rayven Leak (USA) along with Maddie Hanson (Canada). The purpose of the piece is to make the audience ‘experience’ the earth like a living organism that has been broken, torn and battered.
Climate change has been a part of Company | E’s choreographic mission since their first ‘WARMER’ concert in 2008 and Ashley’s piece, Y Zero elucidates his belief in the interconnectedness of life.
He says, “All of us are interlinked but we have created disharmony by treating the universe a certain way. Still, it has its way of restoring balance and communicates its discomfort by manifesting pandemics, climate change spirals and showing signs of global warming. All of this is nothing but symptomatic of environmental imbalance playing itself out. If we are balanced within, we will not see imbalance outside. It all boils down to us and what we can do for global well-being. When I did this piece, I looked at the earth as a living entity in its own right. Would we, without care, do to a human being what we do to the earth? We so casually hack the earth into pieces, drain it of all its life force, stab it, disfigure it and suffocate it with plastic bags. Is that human? If doing this to a human being is wrong, how can we do this to the earth which is an intrinsic part of us and vice-versa? How can the earth sustain us when we treat it with such cruelty?”
The core idea behind the choreography was to evoke a personal response from the audience and Ashley is confident that the piece will achieve that.
