Photo via Fringe

By DCist contributor Allie Goldstein

Reminds us of: Planet Earth as a ballet

Flop, Fine or Fringe-tastic? Between fine and Fringe-tastic.

GLACIER: A Climate Change Ballet is a bit like climate change itself: it has an aching beauty. Choreographed by Diana Movius, an international climate policy expert who also founded Dance Loft 14 in Columbia Heights, the ballet puts seven dancers including Movius on point in front of video footage of an Arctic landscape. But these are not untouched scenes. Off and on throughout the performance, the dancers’ movements are projected against the icy, crackling backdrop, perhaps a reminder that, since people have altered the atmosphere itself, even the remotest places on Earth are now covered with our fingerprints.

The ten segments of GLACIER are each inspired by different types of polar ice, and the dances are meant to “embody the science of icecap collapse.” Probably only a climate scientist would make that connection, but the ballet does have certain glacial qualities. The dancers float and flow, but in some unnerving moments, prima ballerina Therese Gahl’s long, strong legs tremble. At times the video multiplies images of the real-life dancers on the icy-sheer screen behind them, splitting through the tenuous sense of serenity. But more than anything, GLACIER arouses the unique sense of nostalgia that comes from watching something as is disappears. This sentiment is the most acute in “Polar Bear,” performed heartbreakingly by Daniel Cooke to the backdrop of the Arctic’s most iconic endangered species swimming through a (presumably warming) ocean.

Climate change is pervasive and scary; it’s easy to feel helpless. But it’s important not to look away, and art can help us to bear witness. At the end of GLACIER, even the dancers turn to the screen.

GLACIER: A Climate Change Ballet is playing at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on July 12 at 9 p.m., July 16 at 7:30 p.m. and July 17 at 6:30 p.m.

See here for more of DCist’s Capital Fringe 2016 reviews.