[ENG] [中] A Dancer’s Reflections on the Role of Art in a Changing Climate

Text: Sadi Mosko

In 2016, I began research for my article, Stepping Sustainably: The Potential Partnership Between Dance and Sustainable Development [1].This paper felt like a manifesto of sorts: an attempt to unite my passions for dance and environmental sustainability and quell festering existential qualms about my chosen career path. When faced with the growing threats of climate change, becoming a dancer felt like a selfish decision. If I really cared about the planet, shouldn’t I do something with a more tangible impact?

After publishing that paper, I decided to implement its theories in my artistic practice. I started small, exploring how to use environmental science as a choreographic tool. I went on hikes and improvised or composed phrases directly inspired by the landscape, sharing videos through social media (Figure 1) [2, 3].

圖1：Mosko 即興舞蹈短片其中一幕，拍攝於美國愛達荷州。（2017）（照片由作者提供）

A shot from one of Mosko’s improvisational videos, filmed in Idaho, USA (2017) (Photo provided by Sadi Mosko)

After a couple of years of creating those videos, I had an abundance of material. With two friends, I re-learned the movement from those videos and assembled a trio called Tectonic. The piece was loosely inspired by the concept of “sustainability” both environmentally and physically. We performed repetitive acts of running and jumping, exploring the limits of what the human body can endure. Through this type of movement, we tried to embody Earth’s cyclic nature and the constant transformations that sustain our planet.

Did I expect anyone in the audience to pick up on this environmental messaging? No. The work was highly abstract. There was an overarching sense of “structure within chaos,” but ripping the site-specific movement from the site in which it was created inevitably altered its meaning. The exercise was intriguing artistically, but I doubt anyone left the theater inspired to take action on climate change.

圖2：《大地》（The Field）（2021）源於疫情初期的自我反思。在夏末的一個高海拔的沙漠中，作品探索了舞者與環境的互動，並深入探討了衰退、重生、連結和孤立等主題。隨著日出到日落，作品聚焦在自然生態在轉變和再生時的壯麗。（攝：William Bowers）

Figure 2: The Field (2021) blossomed from an introspection early in the pandemic. Depicting a high altitude desert in late summer, it explores a dancer’s interaction with this setting and delves into themes of decay, renewal, connection, and isolation. Following an arc of sunrise to sunset, it draws attention to the brilliance of environmental systems as they transition and regenerate. (Photo: William Bowers)

圖3：《擱淺》（Beached）（2020）利用懸疑小說的套路和負空間的探索，創造一個關於女孩、無人海灘和不速之客的緊湊、緊張又有點滑稽的場面。（照片由作者提供）

Figure 3: Beached (2020) utilizes tropes from mystery novels and explorations of negative space to create a quick, tense, and somewhat comical scene featuring a girl, a vacant beach, and an unexpected visitor (Photo provided by Sadi Mosko)

Tectonic was supposed to premiere in Brooklyn, New York in April 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled that show and sent me spiraling onto unexpected pathways. When faced with the closure of live theatre, I, like many others, dug into dance film [4, 5]. This medium allowed me to return my movement to site-specific natural landscapes (Figures 2 & 3), and it sparked an interest in using non-dance art forms to augment the ideas of my dance work. The political, social, and economic realities of that time forced me to question my goals even further. Earlier thoughts of “Why does this matter?” and “Shouldn’t I be doing something more immediately impactful?” crept back.

Most of my dance training focused on post-modern perspectives and aesthetics, teachings that pulled the body away from the confines of traditional Western narratives and emotion-based art-making. There is certainly a time and place for work steeped in abstraction and experimentation, but the summer of 2020 did not feel like that time.

Four years later, I continue to grapple with this dilemma. In a world of warming temperatures and increasing extremism and violence, does dance matter? Intellectually, I know it does, but emotionally, I wonder if it really solves anything.

Despite my misgivings, I keep being pulled back to those ideas I first explored in Stepping Sustainably: that art—even the most abstract and experimental—is an important driver and communicator of culture, so it has immense potential within the environmental movement. I have purposefully tried to make work unrelated to environmental topics, but the messaging keeps seeping into practically everything I create. This fact alone convinces me that this work is worth exploring further.

Art has been a vital element of social movements throughout history, so why wouldn’t that be true for the environmental movement, a campaign intrinsically linked to politics, economics, and social justice? Since first researching these ideas, I have been thrilled to see more and more of my fellow performing artists exploring environmental topics [6, 7]. However, it feels like we have barely broken the surface of the potential. In my own explorations, these concepts feel limitless. Each time I think I have finished, a new avenue of thought opens. Accordingly, I hope that more creators and researchers will continue to engage with these ideas.

When I started my research, I thought my art could impact the environmental movement. Much to my surprise, it was the environmental movement that impacted my art. My research on the importance of storytelling in environmentalism has reframed how I see myself and redefined what I want to create. Today, I aspire to be a storyteller more than simply a dancer or choreographer. I have always loved books, television, and movies, but throughout my dance training, I separated my artistic endeavors from my love of stories. Now, I am fascinated by how I can infuse linear, non-abstract forms of storytelling into my dance (and infuse my dance into these other mediums).

I took a first stab at this new way of creating in a reworking of Tectonic (Figure 4) where I incorporated elements of projected film and spoken text to make the environmental messaging more accessible. Embracing these new mediums burst open an interdisciplinary style of creation that I am hungry to continue investigating.

Through this new exploration, particularly surprising to me has been a newfound interest in emotion. In the past, I interpreted my post-modern training to mean I should only focus on shape, form, and dynamics. Now, I realize that was a foolish interpretation—those foundational elements of composition cannot be isolated from human sentiment. For that reason, even the most abstract art can make a profound statement.

This realization gives me the beginnings of an answer to the question of why art matters in environmentalism. Today, we are faced with very big, very heavy emotions. Climate anxiety is real; when coupled with the many other crises facing us, it is overwhelming. We, as a society, have not figured out how to process these intense, uncomfortable emotions that are deeply rooted in fear, guilt, and vulnerability. When faced with that assault of feeling, it makes sense that for so many people the instinct is to disengage, fight back, or deny the problem exists. Graphs and political speeches can only take us so far. Storytelling and art are also required to help us find humanity and a semblance of unity within the chaos. Without those elements, these extreme emotions become fodder for manipulation and mismanagement, pulling us farther from the solution and deeper into the problem.

Works Cited:

1. Mosko, S. (2018). Stepping Sustainably: The Potential Partnership Between Dance and Sustainable Development. Consilience, (20). DOI: 10.7916/consilience.v0i20.3769

2. Sadi Mosko. (2019, April 3). Dances with a View: Mt. Borah. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulfKsHkL2AI

3. Sadi Mosko. (2019, April 3). Dances with a View: Dagger Falls. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ZhODQiIuY

4. Sadi Mosko. (2023, January 12). The Field - By Sadi Mosko. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/86ggZr747Og?si=o1hAk03Ocp21bdqO

5. Sadi Mosko. (2021, September 26). Beached - A Dance Film by Sadi Mosko. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzXT4ANJxuc&t=4s

6. Hinerfeld, D., Slean, C., & Jacobs, K. (2024). Rewrite the future: Helping Hollywood accelerate climate solutions through storytelling. In Storytelling to accelerate climate solutions (pp. 137-159). Cham: Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-54790-4_8

7. Loeffler-Gladstone, N. (2020, March 16). These choreographers are using dance to fight for climate action. Dance Magazine, https://www.dancemagazine.com/dance-environment/#gsc.tab=0

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Sadi Mosko

Sadi Mosko is a dancer, choreographer, and writer whose work has been presented at CPR–Center for Performance Research, 92nd Street Y, Columbia Ballet Collaborative, and Treefort Music Fest. Since 2016, she has performed with Colleen Thomas Dance, most recently as part of the Bessie-nominated work, light & desire. Sadi’s debut film, The Field, screened at festivals internationally. Born and raised in Idaho, Sadi graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University with degrees in dance and sustainable development.

一位舞者對藝術在氣候變化中的作用之反思

文：Sadi Mosko

譯：Laura Chan

2016年，我著手研究我的論文《永續舞步：舞蹈和可持續發展的潛在關係》（Stepping Sustainably: The Potential Partnership Between Dance and Sustainable Development）[1] ，試圖將我對舞蹈和環境永續的熱誠結合起來，並平息我對自己所選職涯的生存不安。在日益嚴重的氣候變化威脅下，成為一名舞者似乎是個自私的決定。如果我真的關心這個地球，難道我不該做一些更有實際影響力的事情嗎？

發表該篇論文後，我決定在自己的藝術實踐中應用文中提及的理論，由淺入深地探索利用環境科學作為編舞工具。我在遠足時即興舞蹈，或編創直接受景觀啟發的舞句，並通過社交媒體分享短片（圖1）[2, 3]。

經過幾年的短片創作，我累積了大量素材。我和兩位朋友重新學習片段中的動作，組成一個名為《板塊構造》（Tectonic）的三人舞蹈作品。作品靈感大致來自於環境與身體上的「可持續」概念。我們反覆奔跑和跳躍，探索人體所能承受的極限。通過這些動作，我們試圖體現地球循環不息、不斷轉化的本質。

我有沒有期望觀眾領會作品中的環保訊息？沒有。這個作品非常抽象，籠罩著「混沌中的秩序」的感覺。將場域特定的動作從其創作環境抽離，無可避免地改變了它的意義。這個嘗試在藝術層面上十分有趣，但我不認為觀眾在離開劇院後會受啟發而為氣候變化採取行動。

《板塊構造》本來計劃於2020年4月在紐約布魯克林首演，然而新冠疫情導致表演取消，也將我帶到意想不到的道路上。面對劇場的關閉，我和其他人一樣鑽研起舞蹈電影 [4, 5]。這種媒介讓我將舞蹈動作歸於其場域特定的自然景觀中（圖 2 和圖 3），並激發我使用非舞蹈的藝術形式來豐富舞蹈作品構想的興趣。當時的政治、社會和經濟狀況迫使我再次質疑自己的目標。「這有甚麼意義？」、「難道我不該做些更具直接影響力的事情嗎？」這些想法又再浮現。

我大部分的舞蹈訓練集中在後現代觀點與美學，教導我將身體擺脫傳統的西方敘事和以情感為基礎的藝術創作的束縛。當然，總有埋頭於抽象和實驗性作品的時候和空間，但2020年夏天並非一個這樣的時機。

四年後，我仍然掙扎於這個兩難困境。在一個氣溫不斷上升、極端主義和暴力日益增加的世界裡，舞蹈還重要嗎？理智上我知道它確實重要，但情感上我不確定它是否真的能解決任何問題。

儘管心存顧慮，我仍然不斷回到最初在《永續舞步》中探索的想法：藝術——即使是最抽象和最具實驗性的——都是重要的文化推動力和傳播媒介，因此它在環境運動中擁有巨大的潛能。縱使我有意識地嘗試製作與環境議題無關的作品，但相關訊息卻不斷滲透到我所創作的一切，光是這樣就讓我知道值得進一步探索這項議題。

藝術一直是歷史上社會運動的重要元素，所以又怎會不在環境運動中同樣適用呢？環境運動本質上與政治、經濟和社會公義密切相關。自從開始研究這些想法，我很高興看到愈來愈多表演藝術工作者探索環境議題 [6, 7]，然而，我們好像只是觸及潛能的表面。在個人探索過程中，這些概念像是無窮無盡，每次我以為已到盡頭時，就會出現新的思路，因此我希望有更多的創作者和研究人員繼續投入這些想法。

當我開展研究時，我以為我的藝術可以影響環境運動，但出乎意料地，是環境運動影響了我的藝術。我對環境主義中敘事重要性的研究重塑了我對自己的看法，並重新定義了我想創作的東西。如今我更希望成為一個說故事的人，而不僅僅是一位舞者或編舞。我一直都喜歡看書、電視和電影，但在舞蹈訓練中，我將我的藝術追求與我對故事的熱愛分開了。現在我著迷於如何將線性、非抽象的敘事形式融入舞蹈中（，又將舞蹈融入其他媒介中）。

圖4：《板塊構造》於Center for Performance Research（CPR）在2021年12月3、4日「Fall Movment」的演出。舞者為Nicole Rondeau和Eleanor Altholz（上）以及Nicole Rondeau和Sadi Mosko（下）。投影片段由Owen Reiser（上）和Tim Mosko（下）製作。

（攝：Asya Gorovits，照片由CPR提供）

Figure 4: Tectonic as part of Fall Movement presented by CPR – Center for Performance Research on December 3-4, 2021. Image courtesy CPR. Photos by Asya Gorovits. Projected video footage by Owen Reiser (top) and Tim Mosko (bottom). Featured dancers are Nicole Rondeau and Eleanor Altholz (top) and Nicole Rondeau and Sadi Mosko (bottom) (Photo provided by Sadi Mosko)

我在重新編排《板塊構造》（圖4）時首次嘗試了這種新的創作方式，融入影片投影和口述文本，使環保訊息更容易理解。我渴望繼續探索這些新媒介開創的跨界別創作風格。

在這次新探索中，尤其令我感到意外的是我對情感產生了新的興趣。以前我總以為後現代的訓練意味我應該只關注形狀、體態和節奏。現在我意識到那是個愚昧的詮釋——那些技巧的基本元素與人類情感是密不可分的。因此，即使是最抽象的藝術也能帶出深刻的含義。

這個覺悟初步回答了我對藝術在環境主義中為何重要的叩問。現今我們面對巨大且沉重的情緒，氣候焦慮確實存在，當它疊加在我們面臨的其他危機上，就變得不堪負荷。作為社會整體，我們還未想到如何處理這些深植於恐懼、內疚和脆弱的強烈不適。面對這些感受的衝擊時，很多人本能地選擇抽身、反抗或否認問題的存在，這是可以理解的。

圖表和政治演說的力量有限，我們也需要故事和藝術才能在混沌中找到人性和團結。沒有它們，極端情緒將成為操縱人心和管理不當的養分，使我們離解決方案愈來愈遠，在問題之中愈陷愈深。

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