Velocity's SFDI 2015 Will Be The World's First Climate-Neutral Dance Festival

Every summer, leading innovators in new dance and improvisation descend upon Seattle for the international Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI), now celebrating its 22nd year. In 2015, SFDI will be the world's first consciously climate-neutral dance festival.

SFDI is committed to offsetting all of its greenhouse gas emissions through Bonneville Environmental Foundation's greenhouse gas offsets. This is also supported by Seattle, one of the few large cities in the world that offsets its' greenhouse gas emissions of its' electric utility.

Velocity and the SFDI community of artists, faculty, and improvisers hope this will inspire artists and arts organizers to take action in slowing down global warming, and spread the word about the importance of changing our habits of burning fossil fuels. Velocity Artistic Director Tonya Lockyer says, "My hope in doing this is to increase awareness as well as reduce our footprint."

This effort is largely inspired by SFDI faculty alum / Kidd Pivot dancer Eric Beauchesne's SFDI 2014 Lightning Talk, "Beyond the Ephemerality of Dance," on Kidd Pivot's commitment to touring carbon-neutral. Watch the footage and read the full transcript HERE.

Velocity is also pleased to work with Roel Hammerschlag, SFDI faculty alum / Climate & Energy Policy Consultant, in realizing this goal:

"I'm proud to be working with Velocity to bring awareness of climate change and the things we can do about it to the arts community. For me, dance is about a spiritual connection to the body, and therefore about connection to nature. Stewardship of the planet, and taking joy in moving my body, are very nearly one and the same thing.

The impact of travel and touring within the dance community is significant. Every passenger mile a dancer flies in an aircraft causes about the same greenhouse gas emissions as driving a car that same distance. While faster, it is not much better for the environment. A professional touring dancer can cause more than twice the emissions over time of a fellow citizen who works in a local office, and perhaps a dozen times the emissions of a resident of a developing nation."

The international Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI) is a world-renowned festival that provides the perfect opportunity to learn and share experiences with some of the most highly regarded artists working in the field of dance today. Considered the leading convening of dance improvisers in the U.S., SFDI 2015 features intensives, classes, jams, somatic labs, site-specific workshops, performances and discussions with an exceptional faculty including major American performance makers / Guggenheim Fellows Ralph Lemon and Jennifer Monson. Monson extends SFDI's 2015 theme of environmentalism through a site-specific six-day intensive, investigating dance as a research tool to understand the patterns and systems of the environments we inhabit. Monson will bring her award-winning methodology to the rapidly changing urban ecology of Capitol Hill.

Learn more at velocitydancecenter.org/events/sfdi-2015.