Professor's project draws attention to environment
URBANA – Illinois American Water often talks about the Mahomet Aquifer as a container.
With her Mahomet Aquifer Project, University of Illinois dance Professor Jennifer Monson aims to make us think of our own bodies as containers and to examine our relationship to the aquifer, the source of our clear, good-tasting drinking water.
"My biggest hope is that the project gives the public a way to relate through the body to a sense of place," she said, "and an understanding of the phenomenon of the aquifer from many points of view – scientific, creative dance, visual."
She also wants viewers to think about how they use water from Mahomet Aquifer, an ancient vast underground system that stretches diagonally across the state from west central Illinois to western Indiana.
"I feel this place has a kind of energy because there's so much water beneath us," said Monson, who grew up in arid southern California and said she senses the difference. "We are lucky we don't have to worry about water like they do in the Southwest."
The Mahomet Aquifer Project will feature dance performances, panel discussions and workshops, all free and open to the public, plus visuals, among them video, maps and depictions of, for example, how water molecules pass through cell membranes and how groundwater seeps through layers of sediment to fill the aquifer.
Most of the visual images – they go from the micro to the macro – will be inside an Airstream trailer that will follow Monson and company from site to site – Urbana, Mahomet and Havana, starting Saturday. (Please see sidebar for the schedule.) There also will be information on how to conserve water.
Eventually Monson will take the Mahomet Aquifer Project to surrounding communities in the 15 Illinois counties served by the aquifer. In addition, the project will include a series of movement and science workshops for students at Wiley Elementary School in Urbana with Monson and George Roadcap of the Illinois Water Survey.
Before she moved to Urbana from New York in early 2008, Monson began researching environmental issues here with the goal of creating a project around one. She discovered local opposition to the establishment of ethanol plants because of their threat to the aquifer by drawing large amounts of water.
For the Mahomet Aquifer Project, Monson collaborated with the Water Survey, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
As for music for the dance pieces, she turned to Austin, Texas-based composer and percussionist Chris Cogburn, who is interested in sustained notes. For the Mahomet Aquifer Project pieces, he will perform on an 18-inch singing bowl.
For costumes for dancers, Monson collaborated with Chicago-based designer Katrin Schnabl, who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
"She's conceptually rigorous and really loves the science," Monson said. (The same could be said about Monson.) "She spends a lot of time studying the shapes of the Mahomet Aquifer."
The dance performers include Kyli Kleven, a graduate student in dance; Stephen May and Amy Swanson, both 2008 Dance at Illinois graduates; and Stephen West, a dance student who is taking a year off from his studies.
The dancers' movements – most will be performed outdoors – evoke the forces and flows on the aquifer, ranging from geography and hydrology to economics and history.
Monson has long been interested in exploring environmental issues through dance. Through her nonprofit Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance, she collaborates with scientists, composers, designers and others to create a deeper kinetic understanding of the world.
She's received a number of awards and international attention for her projects, among them "Bird Brain" (2000-2008), which explored migratory patterns, covering routes from Mexico to Canada, from Maine through Cuba to Venezuela, from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, and from the Arctic through Europe to West Africa.
Of her work, Apollinaire Scherr of The New York Times wrote, "Monson has developed an intricate intellectual apparatus for understanding movement, which can be applied to dancing and nearly everything else."
If you go
The Mahomet Aquifer Project events are all free and open to the public and include:
– 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Market at the Square farmers' market, Vine and Illinois streets, Urbana.
– 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 13. Panel discussion, "Moving Perspectives – Approaches to Understanding Water through Geology, Environment, Art and Society, Urbana Free Library, 210 W. Green St., U, with panelists George Roadcap of the Illinois Water Survey; Cecily Smith, Prairie Rivers Network; Brett Bloom, artist and activist; Brigit Kelly, poet; Michael Scoville, environmental philosopher; and Jennifer Monson, moderator.
– 2 to 5 p.m. Oct. 14, Mahomet Farmers' Market, Main Street near Town Hall and Fire Station, Mahomet.
– 5 p.m. Oct. 16, northeast terrace of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Goodwin Ave., U.
– 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 17, Emiquon Nature Preserve and Dickson Mounds Museum, Lewistown.
– 2 to 5 p.m. Oct. 18, University of Illinois Employee Credit Union parking lot, Vine Street and University Avenue, Urbana.
For information updates and details, visit http://mahometaquifer.wordpress.com/ or contact Jennifer Monson at jennifer@ilandart.org.
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