90 min. | 1.5 miles
Premiere:
Climate Week NYC, September 2021
Choreography & Direction:
Danielle Russo
Performance:
Antuan Byers
Jason Collins
Christine Flores
Vanessa Vargas
Costume Design:
Jenny Lai
Mobile App Design:
Katie Dean
Henry Holmes
Stuart Lynn
Tong Wu
Winnie Yoe
Research & Copywriters:
Jorge Luis Berríos
Doug LeCours
Lyndsey Lewis
Kat McKenzie
Lauren Kimiko Parrott
Danielle Russo
Kellyn Thornburg
Laura Rodriguez Torres
Stephanie Zheng
Film:
Talia Koylass
Tim Cothren/New York Choral Society
Cody Buesing/RETHINK Films
Photography:
Whitney Browne
Nima Chaichi
#FinalNotice is sponsored in part by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC); the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC); Dance/NYC Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund; Expensify Community Justice Youth Advocacy Semifinalist Grants; Harkness Foundation for Dance; One Brooklyn Fund and the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President; Revel and Living As A Leader®.
FINAL NOTICE
A 1.5-MILE TRAVELING DANCE TANGIBLY MARKING THE INCREASING FLOODPLAIN CAUSED BY CLIMATE CHANGE IN COASTAL BROOKLYN.
PERFORMANCES ACTIVATE A NEW INTERACTIVE MAP APP THAT EXPOSES CLIMATE CHANGE, ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM, AND HISTORICAL ERASURE ON THE BROOKLYN WATERFRONT, EMPHASIZING NEIGHBORHOODS WITH SUPERFUND AND BROWNFIELD SITES.
THE #FINALNOTICE APP WAS MADE OVER A 2-YEAR COLLABORATION WITH PAID YOUTH LEADERS AT RED HOOK INITIATIVE AND EL PUENTE. IT IS FREELY ACCESSIBLE IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH LANGUAGES, WITH ADDITIONAL UNIVERSAL ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES IN DEVELOPMENT.
Final Notice consists of 6 cyclical dances based on the scientific data and historical archives we gathered in building the #FinalNotice map app with paid Youth Leaders and community allies—local environmentalists, conservationists, historians, and activists doing important work in the face of climate change. With each revolution, these dances accumulate in content, size, and locomotion—echoing and palpably scoring the anticipated 80-year land recession of the Brooklyn waterfront.
Data research, diverse archives, and community interviews are cued on audience members’ phone screens and headphones, correlating to their real-time locations. For example, climate change visualizations of increasing high tides and Urban Heat Islands are layered with information about well-known local sites like the Red Hook Houses. Meanwhile, lesser-known histories of Lenapehoking farmland and Red Hook’s “Tin City” Hoovervilles pop up alongside site-specific oral histories from today’s Brooklynites. Additionally, the performers wear GoPro cameras to actively record the landscape endangered by climate change.
Costume Designer Jenny Lai constructed hazmat suits from recycled fabrics, including slits speaking to the public health vulnerabilities at each site, which are projected to worsen over time. The dancers also wore layers of latex gloves that were gradually stripped, reverberating anxieties about cross-contamination from these environmental sites and as felt during the early stages of COVID-19, alike. All of these costume elements were fashioned in an alarming fluorescent orange—a color that matches the Living Histories layer on the app as chosen by the Youth Leaders at Red Hook Initiative in 2020.
Performances start at the coastline and travel inland, traversing city parks and marking the increasing floodplain caused by climate change in Red Hook and Southside, Williamsburg. In the wake of Hurricane Ida, the definite risks of Brooklyn’s floodplain are ever-present.
In Red Hook, the dancers traverse terrain anticipated to be inundated by the floodplain; in Williamsburg, the work will travel the length between the floodplain edge, illustrating the way the Southside community will be fully surrounded by the waterline.
The territory traveled in Final Notice is located on ancestral Lenape homelands. We honor the importance of these lands for Lenape nations past and present. We acknowledge the ways we have benefitted from colonization, and we are committed to unearthing these systems—and patterns of indigenous erasure—through sharing lost and excluded indigenous histories.
C O L L A B O R A T I V E L Y B U I L T
By centering and amplifying their voices and those of local community allies, we reimagine “archive” as a collaboratively generated, living record where science, history, personal storytelling, and activism meet.
DRPP began its partnerships with Red Hook Initiative and El Puente in 2019, where we built and implemented a brand-new S.T.E.A.M. curriculum with each center’s youth leadership and career exploration programs. By 2020, DRPP launched the first prototype of this S.T.E.A.M. program, called Digital Archaeology, with Red Hook Initiative, a community center working to combat institutional racism and inequity by empowering local youth. Through The Freedom School of the Children’s Defense Fund, DRPP led a virtual collaboratory with its Youth Leaders (ages 12 – 22). Together, we gathered past and living histories, public documents, and growing scientific data to create an interactive portrait of Red Hook, revealing the serious effects of climate change and local policy on the neighborhood. In addition to its in-house artists and technologists, DRPP mobilized a faculty of local environmentalists, conservationists, historians, activists, and community organizers actively working in the neighborhood, to broaden our exploration and encourage community alliance. Together, we worked with the Youth Leaders to gather, process, and organize research and data content. In doing so, we prioritized their self-authorship and reclaiming narratives — particularly championing the Youth Leaders, many of whom are Black and Brown adolescents whose lived experiences have been directly impacted by the systemic racism investigated in our collective research.
Simultaneously, we collaboratively designed the blueprint for the culminating mobile app experience, exploring different technological models and debating how our findings could be effectively arranged and shared with a public audience. What icons best symbolize our research topics? What colors most accurately reflect these topics and their urgencies? What app features or buttons are most engaging? Most intuitive?
In Summer 2021, DRPP shifted to in-person programming at both Red Hook Initiative and El Puente, and introduced a new Dancing for Social Change collaboratory in the S.T.E.A.M. program. DRPP teaching artists and the Youth Leaders created site-specific dances inspired by our collective research and response. DRPP teaching artists consisted of all performers and members of the production and app development teams.
All Youth Leaders were paid for their participation through their community center’s youth development and employment training program for career exploration in the arts, health, social justice, and environmental advocacy. During Summer 2021, Youth Leaders self-archived their research and creative processes seen here, with consent for publication and sharing.
C O M M U N I T Y D R I V E N
The EPA defines Superfund and Brownfield sites as areas contaminated by hazardous waste posing risks to human and environmental health and requiring long-term rehabilitation. Several of Brooklyn’s East River tributaries and industrial sites became Superfunds and Brownfields due to decades of oil, ink, and mercury dumping.
Demonstrated by Superstorm Sandy, legacy pollution at Superfund and Brownfield sites will continue to be exacerbated by climate change with unprecedented floodwater carrying contaminants into residential areas at unsafe levels. According to the DEC, sea levels will rise 50 - 75 inches by 2100 and submerge East Riverfront properties. Yet, Mayor de Blasio’s current protection plan focuses on Manhattan. Moreover, air pollution caused by these sites has made already compromised residents extra vulnerable to COVID-19.
Utilizing action research methodology, we are partnering with Brooklyn community centers founded on social and environmental justice and youth leadership platforms: Red Hook Initiative and El Puente. Both community centers are adjacent to several Superfund and Brownfield sites, and have implemented grass-roots programming to rouse local attention in Red Hook, Gowanus, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint.
These industrial and post-industrial districts are storm-surge zones, but most importantly, they are home to minority, low-income, and immigrant communities who are caught living in a paradox of extreme invisibility and visibility under governing agencies. Studies show that Black and Latinx neighborhoods in Kings County are at a 65% higher probability to experience the extreme weather patterns, events, and air pollution caused by climate change. Conversely, they are subjected to slow and/or absent response from the city and are inundated with immediate threats such as ICE raids, deportation, and police misconduct. Further, corporate real estate development, entangled with local politics, has led to hyper-gentrification and rent increase, causing rapid displacement.
M O B I L I Z I N G F O R C H A N G E
The first of its kind, the #FinalNotice app synthesizes past and living histories, community resources, and scientific research to steer users toward actionable, everyday solutions and initiatives in the immediate area—those already actively working to dismantle structural racism and build local, urban resilience in the face of climate change.
Our Take Action feature pins community resources for users to learn more about how they can participate in local activism in their daily lives:
Where is the nearest compost site?
Where is there a nearby bike share?
When and where can I volunteer as a local Tree Steward?
When and where can I volunteer at my local C.S.A.?
When and where is the next Community Board Meeting?
Where can I access COVID-19 relief supplies? Vaccination sites?
Our growing community of #FinalNotice app contributors :
Kayla Farrish
Kellyn Thornburg
Kia Glean
Kimberley Lucas
Kymani Hines
Lauren Kimiko Parrott
Laura Rodriguez Torres
Leslie Gomez-Rivera
Lisa Willis
Lyndsay Lewis
Michelle Lau
Michelle Montalbano
Monae Minter
Nyla Sprinkle
Nevaeh Middleton
Peter Rothenberg
Reniia Sealey
Roya Carreras Fereshtehnejad
Stephanie Zheng
Steven Jeltsch
Stuart Lynn
Suzanne Spellen
Tiffany Agront
Tim Gilman
Tong Wu
Valentina Tepepa
Vanessa Vargas
Whitney Browne
Winnie Yoe
Yacetie Santos
Yuneicy Ramirez
Zaniya McDay
Abdul Keshinro
Akem Le Gendre
Antuan Byers
Arianna Villafane
Ashly Tavarez
Billy Jean
Carolina Salguero
Catherine Hadlock
Cheng Bao
Christine Flores
Danielle Russo
Deandre White
Demetrius Negron
Devin Dennis
Devrin Goodridge
Doug LeCours
Elyse Mertz
Gita Nandan
Henry Holmes
Hugh Ryan
Iris Ivey
Isis Ivey
Ismael Diaz-Tolentino
Jady Woo
Jakai Lowe
Jason Collins
Jazmin Nazario
Jholdy Cruz
Jordan D. Baptiste
Jorge Luis Berríos
Karen Blondel
Kathryn McKenzie
Katie Dean
