Shrinking Glaciers + Icelandic Dance as Dialogue

OK. So I have debated writing this for a long time-- mostly because this glacier hike was really fun, I'm no geologist, and so on.

But. I am going to share anyways.

September 5, 2017 || EPIC hike on Sóheimajökull (Sun Home Glacier)feat. a downpour.

All in all, Icelandic weather is unpredictable and rain in the summer is common. But our guide had never seen rain on the glacier before. We had just stopped and looked at the rope that measures the yearly shrinking of the glacier. "Over the last century the glacier lost around 2.2 sq.km.  of its front part and it has retreated the equivalent to the size of an Olympic swimming pool annually.  In the video accompanying this blog  is the proof."  Anyways. It started raining. Harder and harder and harder. 

Soon our bodies were completely soaked and we were walking quickly back to the foot of the glacier. As we walked our guide was hooting and hollering in the rain, never had it been this wild. As we passed this trickle of a stream where we'd filled up our waterbotteles by doing a push-up over the opening, we noticed the magnitude of the rain. The stream, which had been no wider than 5 inches, was a rushing river, at least 2 feet wide. And flowing fast. In fact, the "trail" and the "steps" in the ice were all erroding away.

We moved a bit quicker, desperate to be dry, but also to be off the dangerous melting glacier. We noticed tour groups lined up at the foot-- receiving messages to turn around and cancel the trips. 

We made it down, freezing, laughing at the wild adventure and stripping down in the bus in the hopes that our layers would dry. And that was that. 

Until I began analyizing one of the pieces I observed, "Dear Human Being." 

This piece is centered on breathe-- and the idea of humans creating pollution. The dancers breath heavy, gasping for air throughout the dance, they fill balloons up, representing plastic and other waste. The piece is eery. As the Reykjavik Grapevine article states, Vala did not make the dance to preach anything, but to explore this idea of human impact on the earth + global warming, to use dance as a safe space for a dialogue, and hopefully to spur discussion. She was watching debates about climate change in her country, changes of laws to protect the environment from tourists, she was thinking of her daughter's future. 

So is this dance's role? Or art's role in general? To open up the room for topics that are difficult to discuss, reconcile, and explore. To-- through beauty-- have these conversations? 

I have more examples, tons and tons from my time in Iceland...dancers researching philosophies, undermining ideas of "second hand knowledge," trying to break structures and find niches for funding, destroying the definition of dance, creating room for binaries to shatter, and so on. 

------

I won't say too much more.

Besides that this was my experience with glaciers melting + this was a dance that addressed this hard to figure out topic. I believe dance has a role as a conversation starter. I believe art can open eyes and hearts. I believe this to be one of the reasons anthropologists need to study dance. 

Someday, in a number of months, my thesis will be defended and hopefully I'll have presented more evidence in support of the value of dance in a place like Iceland. 

Takk.

All Images: Emily Creek except Glacier hike in the rain (2 images) which are curtesy of a hiker named Toby,