Best Of Tucson®

Best Inventive Modern Dance

FLOW BY NEW ARTiculations Dance Company

Whoever imagined dancers taking the part of waves of water flowing down a river? NEW ART, that's who. On Earth Day, April 22, a blazing Sunday, the troupe's performers danced down the dry riverbed of the once-flowing Santa Cruz. Shod in sneakers, the dancers moved along the baked and cracked earth, re-enacting the time not so long ago when the Santa Cruz was a living river, and its water flowed—and not just during monsoon season. A recorded oral history interview with Menlo Park community leader Lillian Lopez-Grant, who played along the river as a child, provided the soundtrack for a piece about the glory of the life Tucsonans once lived along a flowing stream.