The Artichoke Dance Company choreographs and performs a number of pieces about ocean plastics and waste. They are performing “Your Planet: The Human Mapping Project” this weekend, where seven dancers dressed in crocheted six-pack holders chart the journey trash takes as it leaves land sources and makes its way out to sea. Audience members will be invited to create percussion music with items they find on hand: buckets, cans, sticks, stones and bottles. Director and choreographer Lynn Neuman collaborates with scientists and architects from the Urban Design Lab’s Plastic Trash Patch Project, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University to coordinate movement with facts. For those interested and concerned about relationships between bodies and waste, this is an opportunity to see how these connections might be made visual and visceral through site-specific performance.

From Artichoke’s website:

The Human Mapping Project is designed to bring awareness to the impact of careless human activity, primarily littering, on one of New York CIty’s greatest natural resources, it’s shoreline, of which there is over 600 miles.

From 24/7:

“Our bodies reflect the state of the ocean,” said Neuman. “Like the ocean, our bodies are made of water, and scientists have found traces of plastic in both.”

Manhattan Beach Clean Up with Artichoke Dance Company
The Artichoke Dance Company will perform Your Planet following the American Littoral Society’s 26th Annual Beach Clean Up.
Saturday, September 17th, beach clean up at 10am. Dance starts at 1pm.
RAIN DATE: Sunday, September 18th
WHERE: Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn (Oriental Boulevard at Hastings Street)
GET THERE: Q train to Brighton Beach, then the Manhattan Beach/Kingsborough College bound B1 bus to Hastings Street
Facebook sign up here. Free and open to the public.

See additional article about Your Planet in The Columbia Spectator, Performance turns trash to treasure, from last year.