Imagine living on a planet that provides its inhabitants with an abundance of life-sustaining food and water furnishes the materials for shelter and displays the beauty of the universe to be enjoyed and investigated.

Why would anyone poison the earth that provides their sustenance? Is it possible that person can gaze at the creeks, tide, lakes and rain and not be moved powerfully to treat this home with respect and do everything possible to preserve it from harm?

Most Salt Springers are painfully aware that our lakes are threatened: unwanted chemicals are permeating our soils and leaching into our lakes. Engineers, politicians and concerned citizens have been working earnestly to find remedies for the problems but the outcome is uncertain. This is where art and culture come in to help raise awareness and arouse islanders’ inner feelings of connectedness with our environment, making it a pleasure and a part of all of us to remedy and protect our soil and our waters.

Seonagh Odhiambo is a choreographer, professor of dance and, through her art, a skilled communicator. She is organizing a community dance project focused on healing the waters of St. Mary Lake, with the cooperation of island groups such as the Gulf Islands School of Performing Arts program, the Lobby Dancers, Water Preservation Society, Land Trust Alliance, Waterbird Watch Collective and Islands Institute.

“I consider the creation of dance to be a ‘contact zone,’ which provides an opportunity for community building, research and education around issues,” says Dr. Odhiambo.

“In this particular contact zone the community participants and I will explore stories about water. This will include research into the issue of contaminated water that affects Salt Spring Island, as well as various ‘histories’ — both personal and cultural — of water on the island. Histories derived from interviews and workshops with community participants are developed into movement through a process that brings together researchers and activists, dancers and non-dancers, young and old. Interested participants contribute to the creative process, learning to create movement that reflects meaning about the stories and themes. Often these processes lead the community to instigate further activism around an issue.”

Local dancer Anna Haltrecht is taking a leading role in the project.

“When people can feel something on a visceral level, it has a major effect on their whole being,” she said. “They then can have a whole new understanding of a challenging situation like the trouble St. Mary Lake is in. Their understanding then is not only coming from their intellect, from looking at graphs or reading reports. They experience something else, something without words, from watching dance, from performing dance, about healing the waters of St. Mary Lake.”

Odhiambo is inspired by the work of Japanese researcher and best-selling author Dr. Masaru Emoto, whose work indicates that human thoughts directed at water can physically transform its structure.

Emoto finds that changes in water can be achieved through prayer, music, or by attaching written words to a container of water. So perhaps bringing artful attention and healing intent to St. Mary Lake can help to physically transform and heal the threatened water quality of this most important ecosystem.

Nov. 13 marks the date when Seonagh Odhiambo will be on Salt Spring with a movement development workshop for dancers and non-dancers. The project will evolve over the coming year, culminating with a grand presentation in June 2010.

Maggie Schubart and Caffyn Kelley are on the advisory council of the Islands Institute. The Islands Institute hosts an online space where people can explore the intersections of art, ecology and community, and gather thoughts, images and ideas for healing water. See www.islandsinstitute.com, or e-mail director@islandsinstitute.com.