The National Water Dance Is Ending Its Miami Run in the Most Miami Way Possible

Choreographer Dale Andree has been dancing in Miami since the 1980s. She knows this city through and through. So when it came time to choose the location for the final performance of her National Water Dance — the project she conceived and built from scratch alongside other South Floridians more than a decade ago – she didn’t pick a black-box theater or a manicured park. She picked the fountain outside the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in downtown Miami, flanked by oak trees and palm canopies, with plenty of locals walking by and roosters strutting the grass like they’ve got somewhere to be. 

“It is emblematically Miami,” she tells New Times over a quiet evening Zoom interview. “And the natural beauty of that location is just so iconic for this type of work.”

The National Water Dance, also known as NWD Projects, will dance its last dance on Sunday, April 18, after years of bringing its “movement choir” — a concept Andree traces back to dancer and theorist Rudolf Laban, who, in the early 20th century, gathered dancers and non-dancers to move outdoors for a shared cause — to public spaces throughout Miami.

After Andree got certified as a Laban movement analyst herself, her idea took root. She launched the Florida Waterways Dance Project, a Florida-based beta version, in 2011. Then, nudged by collaborators, she took it national.

Deering Debut

The first National Water Dance debuted at Deering Estate in 2014. The way it worked was deceptively simple: Andree collected movement phrases from participants around the country, then selected one to open every performance and one to close it. Everything in between was up to each site, and that’s still the case with this year’s final Miami performance. At exactly 4 p.m. EST, dozens of locations across the country will begin dancing simultaneously. 

“We build the community through the internet, through communication, and then come together on that one day,” Andree explains.

Twelve years later, Andree says she selected the site of Miami’s final edition with intention. Government Center’s West Park Fountain sits in the heart of a city that is increasingly defined by questions of climate, heat, water access, water clarity, and selective protection. The National Water Dance has always leaned into those tensions.

“How we relate to the environment is ultimately how we relate to each other,” says Andree of the message behind the performance. “And the only way we can move forward is collectively. We can’t save ourselves without saving everybody.”

The Collective

Andree and Ralph Ariza, executive director of Citizens for a Better South Florida, will introduce the final performance, and it will close with a land acknowledgment by Houston Cypress, a Two-Spirit poet, artist, and activist from the Otter Clan of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.

The performance is also interdisciplinary. Sound designer and composer Juraj Kojš built a soundscape around recorded water samples and live water manipulation by the dancers. Spoken-word artist and community activist Arsimmer McCoy has also gathered written reflections from participants across the country and shaped them into an original poem, which will be performed live and woven into Kojš’ score. 

Participating dancers come from local organizations, including Miami Arts Charter and Jubilation Dance Ensemble (MDC Kendall Campus), as well as professional companies, including Dance Now Miami and Karen Peterson and Dancers. Percussionists Ray Robinson and Pedro Ortiz, longtime collaborators of Andree’s, will provide the live rhythmic foundation.

An Enduring Legacy

NWD Projects has always been a grassroots operation — participating sites do not get funding or large institutional backing. Instead, Andree and co-organizer Kristen O’Neill (who teaches at Emory University and has been involved nearly from the start) hold the whole thing together. That’s part of the reason they’re taking their last bow.

“We realized that we can’t build it, we can’t make it bigger,” Andree explains. “We just felt that it was reaching its fulfilling end. We wanted to do it at a time where we felt like there was a lot of energy and we could go out gracefully.”

But that doesn’t mean the story ends here. Andree says some participants have already spun off their own projects from the National Water Dance model. She considers it a promising sign that the project’s legacy will continue. 

“It’s almost like rays of light,” she says. “We know they’re going to be taking this idea and, within their community, creating something else that’s ongoing.”

National Water Dance. 4 p.m. Saturday, April 18, at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center, 111 NW First St., Miami; 305-375-5126; nwdprojects.org. Admission is free.