Environment and Touring

Talking Moves

In this episode we talk to Marla King and Adam Benjamin about environmental responsibility.

Many of us have long recognised our role in protecting the planet but perhaps the last two years of the pandemic – when we lived in our parks and gardens, saw our skies fill with birdsong and our roads quieten – has unlocked a willingness for more of us to take action. But what does action look like for our sector?

We start off by discussing what had changed for us in the past few years, how we came to notice our damaging behaviours (such as extensive travel) and how the climate crisis has intensified in urgency. We discuss social justice within this and how everyone is not equally responsible. We reflect upon the pressures on the younger generation of dancer who seem to be socially and environmentally aware (in ways we weren’t years ago) but who cannot be held solely responsible for evoking change. We also reflect on the fact that the training Marla and other dancers of her generation have had, even recently, has seemed to sidestep any references to environmental responsibility as they prepared for dancing careers.

We find out about Adam’s ecological project The Dancer’s Forest and how Marla entrepreneurially trained to be a carbon literacy trainer alongside starting a podcast A Little Bit of Lagom. In fact, business and environmental responsibility overlap a few times as we contemplate what a world might look like if we conducted our dancing business in hyperlocal settings rather than trying to ‘tour the world’ and how casting changes if the criteria of ‘local’ is put before other aspects.

And finally, we reflect on the changes we could make as individuals and as a sector, how wellbeing is interlinked with environmental awareness and how technologies can offer some solutions (but also contribute to more problems we have yet to fully unpick…)

A conversation which raises more questions than giving answers perhaps, and a starting point as we all reflect on how we can all work greener.

Talking Moves is a Greenwich Dance production
Presented by Melanie Precious
Production by Carmel Smith, Kajsa Sundström, Lucy White and Melanie Precious

Recording date: Wednesday 20 April 2022