Canadian choreographer Judith Marcuse toured her latest large scale multi-media live theatre/dance creation, EARTH=home, to youth audiences across Canada in March and April 2009. Thirty-six performances were presented to an audience of over 10,000 youth and adults in West Vancouver, Nanaimo, Surrey, Vernon, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Vancouver. 

The touring company consisted of 16 people, nine of these young professional performers. The creation involved some of the most exciting senior artists in Canada - composer Hal Beckett, writer Kendra Fanconi, choreographer and director Judith Marcuse, lighting designer Jonathan Ryder, designer Diego Samper and videographer Jamie Griffiths. 

Part of a sequence of works designed to address issues concerning today’s young people, EARTH=home encourages youth audiences to inform themselves about environmental and social issues and to participate in their communities in work for positive change. The production also recognizes that what are often perceived as global issues – as something taking place `over there’ – are also local issues that take place here at home in Canada. EARTH=home is about making connections: between our daily lives and the environment; the `developed’ world and the majority world, between young and old, between understanding and action.

As part of the six-year EARTH Project, EARTH=home premiered at the International EARTH Village Festival in Vancouver in 2006 and the original production was extensively reworked for the tour.  The production’s kinetic vocabulary reflects the diversity of the performers’ backgrounds, integrating urban and contemporary movement with ballet-based and popular dance forms. The original score is based on highly- rhythmic world music structures. Video content consists of an e-mail conversation that uses quotes from workshops, statistics and montages/treatments of photographic materials of the natural world.

The raw material for the production came through an intensive four-year workshop process with hundreds of youth. Using a variety of arts-based practices and working with young people from diverse communities, these workshops explored the central issues of the EARTH Project, including environmental sustainability and social justice. Using JMP’s trademark combination of humour, drama, strong young performers and the use of sophisticated sound and video technology, this raw material was transformed into a lively production that is designed to create dialogue and engagement with the issues we face both locally and globally, while giving voice to the perceptions and dreams of young people.

An integral part of each of performance were the talkback sessions involving all of the performers along with representatives from our community partners – a wide range of environmental / social issues-based NGO’s. During these talkbacks, young people were encouraged to share their experiences, thoughts and feelings about environmental and social justice issues. JMP also developed a 45-page Study Guide for EARTH=home to enable teachers to do more in-depth discussion with their students before and after the performances. Other organizations are now using this educational tool.

The EARTH=home tour accomplished its objectives in more impactful ways than we hoped. JMP has received emails and letters from many dozens of audience members who have changed certain small daily behaviours such as not using plastic water bottles, turning off lights and re-using/recycling since seeing the performance. Schools have been inspired to create arts- based and other environmental and social justice projects inspired by the show. We have heard about families and youth volunteering in their own communities and with NGO’s. Many teachers who attended said they wished that every student in their city could see the production. As the production travelled across Canada we were able to share what schools in other regions were doing, inspiring others to take action.

We are confident that EARTH=home has introduced many youth and adults to new forms of dance – and accessible ways to experience dance – and that we have, through this medium, both educated and galvanized dialogue and engagement with the issues explored in the production. We hope we have also given voice to the many perspectives of the young people with whom we worked on this project.

We learned, yet again, that the arts can provide compelling and effective ways to educate and engage young people about issues that affect their lives. We learned, yet again, that young people are hungry for expression of their true thoughts and feelings and that the arts make that possible. We learned, yet again, that adults and young people can engage in meaningful dialogue when fuelled by an experience that engages both the head and the heart.