Nature-Based Storytelling through Dance

Spring is in the air as the natural world prepares with days growing longer, animals emerging from a winter’s rest, and trees beginning to bud and blossom. Do you feel the energy around us?

Join Julia Gerwe of the Kentucky Environmental Education Council to get outdoors and explore the changing of the season through sensory observations and dance. Participants will meet in the River Room and then take an outdoor walk along Wapping Street and around the library* to notice interactions within local ecosystems and translate these observations into movement through dance. Together, we will “Build-a-Phrase” of movements in line with Dance Exchange and the US Forest Service’s Moving Field Guide Curriculum to tap into the energy of this season in our bodies. (*Please wear your walking shoes! Outdoor component of event will strive for accessibility, remaining along/near paved surfaces and including “challenge by choice” to venture beyond this. We’ll decide our exploration boundaries together, and all are welcome!)

Julia Gerwe is an environmental educator and advocate with a certain passion for sustainable community thriving. Through the Kentucky Environmental Education Council, Julia oversees the Environmental Education Leadership (EEL) Corps, an AmeriCorps program enhancing the EE capacity of Kentucky non-profits. When she’s not working, Julia enjoys sewing and creating, running, and curling up to a sweet cozy mystery from the Paul Sawyier Public Library alongside her cat, Charlotte.