THIN ICE
THE LIVING EARTH
FOR GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTIONS
Artistic Director
Cheryl Flaharty
Dancer
Summer Partlon
Costume and Set Design
Cheryl Flaharty
Lighting
Janine Myers
Production Assistant
Lynn Maire Sager
Stage Manager
Barett Hoover
Video Editing
Neal Izumi
Costume & Set Construction
Cheryl Flaharty, Dee Laris, Carlynn Wolfe, Lindsey Shannon, Geneva Rivera, Peggy Hill, Rose Wolfe.
Supported by the Hawai`i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, through appropriations from the Legislature of the State of Hawai`i or grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cades Foundation, and Jean Rolles.
ABOUT THE SHOW
‘The Living Earth’ was presented in 2009 as the fifth interactive production of IONA’s diverse Salon Series. Staged at Honolulu Hale’s Sky Gate Sculpture designed by Isamu Noguchi, 'The Living Earth' wove together dance and spirituality to present a theatrical dialogue of universal concerns. The interactive performance revolved around a Cosmic Circus featuring a Living Altar of sacred statues that brought the audience through the chakras as the evening progressed. Surrounding the Circus were nine Gates of Earth Awareness performance tents designed to honor and bring awareness to the current state of the planet and human consciousness. Prior to the show, audience members chose their individual “fate,” or order in which they watched the performance evolve as they visited each of the nine Gates.
ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING
Floods. Droughts. Heat waves. Monster wildfires. Climate change is not just about polar bears, the iconic symbol of a melting Arctic. Global warming affects the entire planet. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere act like a blanket that keeps the Earth warm. This protective blanket helps make our planet habitable. But over the past 200 years, humans have greatly increased the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like oil and coal. This is like throwing on a second blanket, causing temperatures to rise.
Other factors such as deforestation have added to the problem. Trees soak up carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases, from the air. Fewer trees, especially in the Tropics, means less CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. The chief threat to the polar bear is the loss of its sea ice habitat due to global warming. It is on the Arctic ice that the polar bear makes its living, which is why global warming is such a serious threat to its well-being. As climate change melts sea ice, the U.S. Geological Survey projects that two thirds of polar bears will disappear by 2050. This dramatic decline in the polar bear is occurring in our lifetime, which is but a minuscule fraction of the time polar bears have roamed the vast Arctic seas.
