Climate change has been a key part of Diana Movius’ life ever since the fourth grade. She distinctly remembers that day in elementary school when a scientist came to talk to her class about deforestation and climate change.
“I was just absolutely devastated. Because before that, I had no idea that climate change was a thing,” Movius says. “I had no idea that rainforests are being destroyed. I remember I came home crying, and I asked my mom if it was true. And she said, ‘Yes.’ And I just lost it.”
Today Movius is a climate policy expert and choreographer—she has been combining these two passions her entire life. She’s worked at several climate-focused think tanks and organizations, working with the Climate Advisers and the World Bank. But ballet, which she’s been dancing since she was 5 years old, has always been a priority.
In 2014, she founded Dance Loft on 14, an intentionally affordable dance studio in Petworth. Located in a restored 1920s theater, Dance Loft offers ballet and contemporary classes for youth and adults; it’s also available to rent as a rehearsal space for other genres.
The same year she opened Dance Loft, Movius had an idea to bring her two loves together. She created GLACIER: A Climate Change Ballet, which will be performed at the National Portrait Gallery for the first time on April 28, as part of the gallery’s ongoing exhibition Forces of Nature: Voices That Shaped Environmentalism (spotlighted in our 2023 Fall Arts Guide). The ballet envisions dancers as melting, cracking ice, and portrays animals, such as polar bears, enduring the rapidly changing climate. GLACIER has been performed more than 40 times since its inception, at theaters and climate policy events alike, including New York Climate Week. It was most recently performed at the Dance Loft on 14 in the fall.
The production uses dance to capture the sadness and immediacy behind climate change. Movius describes the project as a “deep-seated urgency” to get at the emotion behind the inevitability of climate change and dire need to reduce its effects, beyond the technical text in legislation she was working on in her policy jobs.
But the creation of the dance stems back to one night when she watched a documentary on how the Arctic and Antarctic are responding to their changing temperatures. She was inspired.
“I realized there are all these different types of ways that ice in the Arctic and Antarctic are responding to climate change, and those have physical movement qualities,” Movius says. “That could be the structure for the piece.”
Movius hopes the audience at the National Portrait Gallery performance walks away feeling validated in their fears about climate change, but also prompted to act.
Other dance companies are tackling similar topics through movement. The San Francisco Ballet recently put on a production focusing on the ethics of artificial intelligence, for example. And using art, specifically dance, to communicate technical and intimidating topics is a powerful vehicle to meet people where they are.
“It also sort of humanizes an issue and makes it more relatable,” Movius says. “There are scientific issues that feel dry … But when you take that concept and put it into a performance, that makes it more relatable and accessible, and, I think, it gives the human dimension of why experts feel the way they do about these issues.”
GLACIER: A Climate Change Ballet by Diana Movius starts at 4 p.m. on April 28 at the National Portrait Gallery as part of the ongoing exhibition Forces of Nature: Voices That Shaped Environmentalism. npg.si.edu. Free.