Ana Teresa Fernández, Laguna Dance, team up to foster ocean connection during Art + Nature
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Laguna Art Museum capped its 13th annual Art + Nature celebration last weekend with its commissioned artist Ana Teresa Fernández bringing the masses to the beach in hopes of creating a community of environmental changemakers.
Fernández worked with local groups and visiting art enthusiasts to bring about a number of activations on Main Beach. Those included a choreographed routine performed by Laguna Dance on Friday, followed by a collective action of approximately 800 individuals on Sunday.
The social artwork used reflective surfaces, in particular mirrors, in a variety of forms and fashions. Laguna Dance, for instance, had double-sided mirrors attached to the hands of its 10 dancers, as it worked in rhythm with the waves of the Pacific Ocean.
Fernández spoke with Jodie Gates, the founder and artistic director of Laguna Dance, ahead of time, but the first time she saw the performance was during the public viewing event.
“There’s these moments where they look like these incredible ripples,” Fernández said of the dance routine. “The arms were these ripples and ripples and ripples, and twisting and turning and twisting and turning. I was just like, ‘She got it.’ You have to let artists do what they do. The Laguna Art Museum sung very highly about [Laguna Dance]. … In our conversations, we just jibed.”
Gates said she had hoped the group would be invited to participate in Art + Nature for a while. It took no small amount of consideration to account for the light, as well as the variances the ocean can present. A ritualistic hula dance, expressing appreciation for land and sea, was an intentional addition.
“I had read [Fernández’s] proposal, and also the wording that she created about ‘Save Our Seas,’ understanding that she was trying to convey that we all are drops of water that, in a sense, we all see ourselves in the ocean, that we consist of water,” Gates said. “I showed the dancers Ana Teresa’s idea of the artwork, what they’d be wearing on their hands, which is very different because it’s incredibly reflective, so not just the movement of the arms and hands, but how the light is being shared and displayed, depending on the angle of the hands.
“Knowing that they were wearing artwork that we could play with light, that gave us, also, an impetus of, ‘Oh, how do we use motion that might be consistent with water, or the cadence?’ The ocean isn’t always the same cadence. It goes in bursts. It has dynamic qualities.”
Gates also shared insights into the challenges of choreographing and executing a routine without music.
“We had to rely on the structure of precision and counting,” Gates said. “In a way it was a mathematical quiz for the dancers. They did not have a musical cue. They had to be incredibly, keenly aware of one another in order to either be in unison, or not.”
Still, hundreds came out to watch the two shows from the boardwalk.
Laguna Art Museum brought back an upcycled couture fashion show to kick off its 13th annual Art + Nature programming on Saturday, Nov. 1. The theme was “Restoring the Future.”
Come Sunday, it was time for the participatory art project, as an estimated 800 volunteers held up reflective mirrors and mimicked the movements of the ocean, all while standing together in a formation that spelled out “SOS” in morse code. The phrase “Save Our Seas” was applied to the international distress signal for the environmentally-focused initiative.
Drone footage showed the volunteers pointing their mirrors toward the sky, the light flickering off of them, much like the waves just a few steps away from where they stood near the high tide line. Fernández used a megaphone to provide direction to the crowd, which included people of all ages.
“From having experience of 20 years of working as an artist, there needs to be not just awareness, there needs to be awareness, access and action in order to achieve agency,” Fernández said. “Putting people, participants, through a movement, bringing them towards the message and having them enact, so they can, through a somatic action, embody the message, quite literally, it’s a whole different ballgame. I think that that’s when people really wake up and become alive to be more proactive and be willing to be messengers of change.”
Fernández said she drew inspiration from a Rumi quote, “You are not just a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop.” She has invoked those words from the 13th-century Persian poet to counter the minimization of the impact an individual can make.
“It really embodies a different perspective that you need in order to not feel dismissive of how important the environment is,” Fernández added. “It brings you back.”
Laguna Art Museum will continue to offer free admission through the month of November.
