By request of people around the world, we have decided to give everyone more time, and to extend the deadline to May 15th 2014 JUNE 1st 2014. If you are participating in the Dance4Peace on Earth project, please get us your videos and photos by that date. Use your assigned Google Drive folder, if your movies are too large for emailing. [If you are dancing with us and do not yet have your Google Drive link, email dance4peace (at) dance-alchemy.org and ask for one.]

If you are reading this and have NOT yet signed up, but would like to, then go to this page and join. There is still time!

Looks like we will be traveling to meet with dancers from Unity of Hagerstown, to spend a day rehearsing and then filming their version of Dance4Peace. They are the first group from the U.S., other than ourselves, to step up and get involved. It’s all happening later this month at Harper’s Ferry, VA, during a retreat held there.

Thank you, Unity of Hagerstown, and your spiritual leader (and our good friend) Sandy Boyer! Yay, you!

For the past three weeks, we’ve seen a steady growth in sign-ups for the Dance4Peace documentary. We imagined that the number of people from the different countries would relate to their population sizes. Boy, were we ever wrong. Size means nothing, and enthusiasm everything.

The first country represented was Venezuela. In fact, the dancer from there was the first from anywhere. Two more have joined from Venezuela since then, but the actual “leader” has even more. Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria are all represented. You would think that these countries, with an aggregate population of 149 million between them, might dominate the list. Right?

Nope.

As of today, the country with the highest number of participants in Dance4Peace, worldwide is …

< drum roll, please …. >

Bhutan!  Nestled in the Himalayan mountains, East of Nepal, bordered top and bottom by China and India, the kingdom of Bhutan has a population of around 750,000, which is about the same amount of people as Fort Worth, Texas, or Charlotte, NC in the U.S – and those are cities, not states. It has amazing scenery, a rating as one of the happiest places on Earth to live… and, so far, the largest number of people signed up to be in the Dance4Peace on Earth movie.

Not only are they signed up, they are working to meet up as a dance group (most of them didn’t know each other before this), to do the dance together. We think that’s awesome! Go Bhutan!

Shout outs to Venezuela and Morocco, tied for second place as of right now, with Egypt next. Ok, we realize it’s not a contest, but we think it’s interesting that total population seems to have no bearing on the proportion of people who are responding.

The Dance4Peace on Earth film project is still open, and anyone from anywhere can join. How about you?

Click here to jump to the Join page, and thanks for reading.

It all started with an Earth Monastery grant from the Abbey of the Arts, igniting a dream that is now reaching all around the world. Who knew that such a small flame could start something so big? You can read more about the Abbey and their grant here.

Our idea was is to unite dancers all over the world around a common theme. Because Dance Alchemy is all about connecting people and fostering peace, we picked World Peace as the theme for the project, which would be a documentary film. We knew this would have to be a progressive, collaborative project, involving dancers from around the world.

However, the Abbey’s grant was themed around stewardship of the Earth, meaning its care and preservation – not peace, per se. So we proposed to them that it’s a bit hard to concentrate on taking care of the environment when people are dealing with conflicts and wars. Peace and care of the Earth go hand in hand, we said. Dancers the world over would get behind this, we said. We wondered if they would agree.

Answer: Yes. On November 29, 2013, we heard they selected us to receive their grant for the Dance4Peace project. It wasn’t a large sum, but the whole point was for it to serve as “seed money” to get the project started. We were elated!

Work began in earnest through the Christmas holidays and into the New Year. First, we composed and arranged “Vast & Eternal River,” then choreographed a dance for it. Both the song and the dance moves are themed in tonal scales and movements from our own Native American (First Nations) tribes here in the U.S.. We had help from our First Nations advisor, Cynthia Vice, and assistance in the music post-production from David Janssen and Phil Esserwein.

In January 2014, we assembled our dancers and began rehearsals. We all worked like mad, right through one of the coldest months ever in Maryland. Shooting of the footage used in the movie, Vast & Eternal River as well as in the instructional video, was done in one weekend, February 1st and 2nd, at five locations around the Baltimore area. What you see in the movies is the result of 51 takes in the course of 14 working hours that weekend. The movies were released online at the end of February.

As of this moment, we are engaged in recruiting and assisting dancers and dance groups from around the world to be a part of the project. Response is growing steadily, and from some surprising places. What’s NOT surprising is that many of the international members are from countries that are having, or have known, conflicts and wars.

Future: Already we know this will be the first in a series of Dance4Peace projects. The final documentary movie from this grant will be released in Summer 2014, but we can see that the groundswell of support is too big to stop there. Plans are underway to seek more funding and – with or without funds – to start work on a second movie in the Fall of 2014.