In the wake of centuries of colonial pursuits, the natural world is suffering. The land, water, and air are polluted and living organisms are facing extreme violence. These environmental changes magnify the injustices present throughout colonial empires. In order to protect the Earth and its inhabitants, a major cultural shift towards restorative justice with an empathetic mindset, and away from the extractivist systems that colonialism has created, must occur. Dance can be used to unite people against climate injustice and can serve as a vehicle to understand and alleviate negative feelings associated with climate injustice. In this paper, I will look at the ways Indigenous and African diasporic dancers have implemented movement in their work towards restorative justice, and argue that an examination of their work provides a path for a postcolonial society to better connect to the natural world and their own bodies.

Dance is an inherently social art form and aspect of society that is not only ingrained into every culture, but drives it. In her TedX Talk “Using the Power of Dance to Address Climate Change,” Arzucan Askin argues that dance’s power as an application to climate injustice comes from its universality. It is a shared form of non-verbal communication that doesn’t require a shared language or background to form a connection to another person.¹ While movement is a relatively universal instinct, it is also sensitive to the particulars of local diversities. Confronting climate injustice requires a total cultural shift in the individual and collective mind towards empathy and connectivity, and dance is a well-suited guide in this shift. In Sadi Mosko’s article, “Stepping Sustainably: The Potential Relationship Between Dance and Sustainable Development,” she asserts “much of our sustainability problem results from our culture… the values, beliefs, practices, and traditions that characterize a group of people and influence the choices and actions those people make.”² Disconnection from living things and acceptance of violence seeps into all aspects of western life as a result of colonialism. The arts, being rooted in and driving forces of culture, are therefore particularly applicable to transitioning out of this cycle of extractivism and into sustainability and care.

The only way to address climate injustice is immediately and from as many angles as possible, but the issue is still failing to gain rapid and widespread traction. The two main reasons for this resistance are people feeling overwhelmed by the subject and disconnected from its implications. Mosko writes about the difficulties in communicating the urgency of climate injustice to the general public who is often illiterate in terms of specific environmental language; therefore environmentalists’ statistics and information are not the accessible push towards sustainability most people need.³ Dance, being a universal language, can serve as an alternative that might captivate a larger audience and encourage sustained engagement with sustainable practices.

Gemma Collard-Stokes’s blog post “Dancing for Climate Change” argues for a new way of approaching environmentalism by using dance to reconnect with the natural world, allowing people to empathize with its mistreatment. Collard-Stokes states that “while science shines a light on the extent to which nature has been ecologically marginalized in Western-centric culture, the arts are stepping up and reminding us that meaningful lives do not exist without meaningful connections with the rest of the natural world” and that the facts provided by scientific environmentalism “cannot create enough power on their own, therefore, to insert action, messages of climate change require an event that connects with its audience on an emotional level.”⁴ Where traditional approaches to environmentalism and the facts they provide can overwhelm the audiences they are meant to incite, dance can provide an alternative route in communicating the urgency of climate injustice.

Climate anxiety, the fear of climate change and its effects on Earth and human life, can overwhelm people so much that it affects their daily lives and the way they engage with sustainability and climate justice,⁵ but by meeting the fear of climate crisis with love for the natural world, sustainability efforts can be more productive. Many academics make efforts to define people’s connection to the natural world as an aspect of their identity. For example, in Briana Imani Blakey’s “Patterns In Wild Places: Approaching Dance/Movement Therapy Through The Lens of Ecopsychology,” it is an “ecological self” and in the chapter “Identity” in Communicating Climate Change: A Guide for Educators, it is an “environmental identity.”⁶ Like any identity, it is not inherent and has the power to change over time and through certain practices. This concept offers a direct way of empathizing with the natural world and combats the anthropocentrism that has invaded all aspects of Eurocentric society and culture. By connecting positively with one’s ecological identity through any medium, anxiety around climate injustice might be shifted to a more productive stance on the interrelatedness of beings on Earth which could incite the care necessary for true sustainability.

A distance from the natural world, or lack of an ecological self, is the reason for many people’s ignorance of climate injustice. Blakey writes, “Euro-American culture perceives ‘the spirit’ as the mind and the self and nature as organic organisms and environments… this split is a product of a misconception that the spiritual and the natural are mutually exclusive, when in reality they are interconnected.”⁷ Similarly disconnected are the mind and body as a result of colonialist values. Western dance/movement therapy began in the 1940s to address mind-body disconnect resulting from the consumption hungry and time crunching capitalistic force that is Euro-American society.⁸ Dance and movement therapy have been used to shift identity and connectivity since its earliest applications, and therefore has the potential to develop and strengthen environmental identities in order to improve people’s engagement with sustainability and environmentalism.

A crucial aspect of building environmental identities is empowerment and empathy. When individuals are encouraged to feel empathy with the natural world (including one another), they are empowered to take action against climate injustices. Collard-Stokes’s claim argues that “in order to restore our meaningful relationship with the natural world, we must have access to experiences and ways of knowing that help us develop these bonds…dance performance and participation offers us encounters of belonging, of kinship and of care, so we might fall in love with the planet again.”⁹ From a Eurocentric lens, the approach of dance in building a loving relationship with the environment is relatively recent, but many cultures have been implementing movement into their healing practices and never fully lost connection to their bodies and the rest of the natural world. 

Afro-Caribbean dance is a significant conductor of change through its healing and empowerment capacities. In a talk with the American Dance Therapy Association titled “Afro-Caribbean Dance Healing System: Connection, Meaning, Power,” Maria Rivera talks about Afro-Caribbean dance as a cultural mechanism for healing. The Afro-Caribbean dance healing system works through culture and tradition to supply dancers with tools to feel more connected to their bodies and environment by providing access to full levels of empowerment—the self-body power, collective power, sociopolitical power, and spiritual power.¹⁰ All of these types of empowerment are relevant to combating climate injustice and without attending to each, environmentalist efforts will continue to be unsuccessful. Afro-Caribbean dance uses symbols within movement that connect the dancer with nature, allowing them to reconstruct their narrative of self and identify more closely with the natural world. Spiritual empowerment comes by way of accessing the energy present throughout the entire natural world through movement.¹¹

There is a high level of both empowerment and interrelation that comes from engaging with dance performances and in the natural world. Dance therapy, spiritual practice, and interaction with the natural world are all ways of connecting people through something that they are a part of, but is also greater than themselves.¹² Engaging with systems larger than the self is a salient method of combating the individualist and anthropocentric way of life currently dominating mainstream culture and environmentalist efforts. Elizabeth Kick is an artist and teacher in the Berkshires of Massachusetts who often engages with the natural world using creativity and movement. In an interview with Kick about how this engagement affects her creative work and relationship to her environment she states, “Communing with nature touches a place deep within my heart and inspires me to paint… The sights and sounds and sensations I find in the woods connect me to the elements of earth, water, air, and fire, and inspire me to paint and sculpt.”¹³ The empowerment resulting from the expansion of self to encompass the natural world (and conversely) opens up new opportunities for radical empathy and creativity.

Creating a sense of kinship between humans and non-humans in the natural world could allow more people to feel directly connected to the plight of climate injustice and inspire change. Emily Johnson is an Indigenous movement artist and activist based in Lenapehoking and is of the Yup’ik Nation. Her work aims to “make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral part of our connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present and future.”¹⁴ She has led performances that encourage all those taking part to work and connect directly with the natural world and each other. In her 2014 performance Shore, performers and audience members moved together and with the land—feasting, storytelling, dancing, and planting native trees and plants after Hurricane Sandy—inciting actions that affirmed the importance of caregiving and receiving as part of protecting kinship.¹⁵

More generally, Indigenous communities engage in many different types of dance practices to connect with the natural world. In Vandana K’s interview about art, colonialism, and the planet with writer Amitav Ghosh, they speak about how Ghosh’s most recent books interact with indigeneity and environmentalism. In his book The Living Mountain, the main character connects with ancestral “Adepts, wise women who led community dances in a state of trance. The mountain spoke to them through the soles of their feet… Ghosh’s writing distinctly addresses the visceral relationship between Nature and our bodies through dance.”¹⁶ While connecting with the natural world on this level is ingrained into most Indigenous people’s values and ways of life, Eurocentric groups could benefit from engaging with the land and their bodies in new ways.

Arts can be used to deal with climate injustice by incorporating the natural world into creative processes/projects and creating work directly addressing climate crisis. Intertwining the natural world and creative processes encourages people to approach environmentalism from an angle unique to their individual creative interests while playing a part in something that goes far beyond the individual level. The burnout that can result from sustained activism and contact with issues of injustice might be avoided if people come at their sustainability and activism efforts from their own perspective, incorporating their skills and interests. For Kick, news sources and strictly scientific narratives have deterred her from actively pursuing environmental activism, but through art and connection to the natural world she affixes herself to her environment and creativity: “I do watch and listen to documentaries and discussions on what’s going on in the world… I’d rather paint about compassion and unity. And given my love of nature and my walks in the woods, it inspires me to paint a lush green Cretacieous/Henry Rousseau-like painting.”¹⁷ Kick provides an example of how individuals can incorporate their own creativity into their sustainability practices, and their ecological self into their creativity.

Creating artistic work directly related to climate injustice can more actively engage audiences in reflection and inspire action. These are the works that provide different mediums in approaching environmental activism and information sharing. The dance Ashesh Barsha: Unending Monsoon conceptualized and choreographed by Ananya Chatterjea is an: 

Intense examination of issues of climate justice and witnesses the horrifying transformation of life-sustaining phenomena into deathly forces, and of natural resources into privately owned commodities. The unending monsoon is a metaphor for a world torn asunder by global warming’s howling winds and towering waves, irresponsible global industrial policies, toxic spills, and land appropriations from indigenous communities.¹⁸

The dance had multiple parts with different variations of fabric, numbers of dancers, and fluidity. There are strong images of contrast throughout the dance: the water-like fabric consumes the stage and bodies as the dancers appear to be fighting against the fabric and one another. The powerful dynamic between the fluidity of the fabric and the sharp body movements shows individual and collective efforts. As a postmodern dance there is not necessarily a clear narrative, but Chatterjea made tangible the suffering, fortitude, and hope at the center of climate injustice.¹⁹

Combating climate injustice with solely artistic or scientific approaches would not work: they must be enacted simultaneously. Art is needed to create and sustain the cultural shift necessary for repairing human relations to the rest of the Earth and one another, and scientific environmentalism is needed to provide the fact-based information essential to understanding the current state of the climate and acting accordingly. Malcolm Miles’s article “Representing Nature: Art and Climate Change” questions environmental art’s effectiveness at inciting action among its viewers. In Miles’s conclusion about his own response to artistic representation of climate change he states, “I may change my lifestyle on the basis of rational argument and evidence, and encounters with images and artists may encourage this, but perhaps the effect is multiple and cumulative and consists in an inflection of conditions (or my perception of them) to which data and image are vital.”²⁰ Here Miles supports the idea that a combination of art and fact is crucial to fueling sustainability.

Furthermore, both art and science rooted in colonialist values such as extractivism and anthropocentrism must be challenged. Seeing as colonialism has been the driving force of human’s disconnect from their bodies, one another, and the natural world, rejecting all of the beliefs and practices instilled in Western culture by colonialism is a necessary step toward repairing these connections. By centering Indigenous and African diasporic knowledge and practices in environmentalist efforts, connectivity and climate justice become possible.

1. Arzucan Askin, “Using The Power of Dance To Address Climate Change | Arzucan Askin | TEDxLSE,” TEDxTalks, June 10, 2019, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iWtqnaklWg. Accessed 8 March 2023.
2. Sadi Mosko, “Stepping Sustainably: The Potential Partnership Between Dance and Sustainable Development,” Consilience 20, no. 1 (2018): 64, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26760103. Accessed 08 Mar. 2023.
3. Mosko, “Stepping Sustainably,” 65.
4. Gemma Collard-Stokes, “Dancing for Climate Change,” University of Derby, October 28, 2021, https://www.derby.ac.uk/blog/dancing-for-climate-change/. Accessed 8 March 2023.
5. “Yale Experts Explain Climate Anxiety,” Yale Sustainability, March 13, 2023, https://sustainability.yale.edu/explainers/yale-experts-explain-climate-anxiety. Accessed 14 May 2023.
6. Anne K. Armstrong, et al., “Identity,” Communicating Climate Change: A Guide for Educators (Cornell University Press, 2018), 44. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv941wjn, Accessed April 10, 2023.
7. Briana I. Blakey, “Patterns In Wild Places: Approaching Dance/Movement Therapy Through The Lens Of Ecopsychology,” Sarah Lawrence College, May 2020, https://digitalcommons.slc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=dmt_etd, 21, accessed March 8, 2023.
8. Blakey, “Patterns in Wild Places,” 21.
9. Collard-Stokes, “Dancing for Climate Change,” https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.derby.ac.uk/blog/dancing-for-climate-change/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1690835393191065&usg=AOvVaw16VdBkrXHItPL0FKn9BNJC
10. Maria E. Rivera, “Afro-Caribbean Dance Healing System: Connection. Meaning. Power,” YouTube, uploaded by American Dance Therapy Association, April 6, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8UdejfycFE. Accessed 8 March 2023.
11. Rivera, “Afro-Caribbean Dance Healing System,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DM8UdejfycFE
12. Blakey, “Patterns in Wild Places,” https://digitalcommons.slc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=dmt
13. Elizabeth Kick, personal interview, May 8, 2023.
14. “Emily Johnson/Catalyst Dance,” http://www.catalystdance.com/, accessed April 11, 2023.
15. “UConn Reads: Good Relations,” YouTube, uploaded by University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, April 27, 2021, https://youtu.be/aC-iHLbesbs, accessed 10 April 2023.
16. Vandana K, “A New Worldview,” Resurgence and Ecologist, no. 334 (Sept. 2022): 24-29, EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=158554845&site=eds-live.
17. Kick, personal interview.
18. Ananya Chatterjea, “Ashesh Barsha: Unending Monsoon,” Ananya Dance Theatre, 2009, https://www.ananyadancetheatre.org/dance/ashesh-barsha/. Accessed 14 May 2023.
19. Chatterjea,“Ashesh Barsha: Unending Monsoon,” https://www.ananyadancetheatre.org/dance/ashesh-barsha/.
20. Malcom Miles, “Representing Nature: Art and Climate Change,” Cultural Geographies 17, no. 1 (Jan. 2010): 32, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44251311.