“Be Water”
Artistic Director’s notes for summer 2026
“BE WATER..”
I lead with w Bruce Lee , who has inspired and influenced so many creators of colors, to step up and make spaces that didn’t exist, by taking on the unfathomable work of producing, defying industry limitation and stereotype by making empowering cross cultural art for the masses. By the way my friend Jeff Change recently published a biography of this cultural icon, and I was blessed to attend the San Francisco Chinatown One Family celebration where the book was featured… To learn more about Bruce Lee through this writing please check out Water Mirror Echo ( https://jeffchang.net/water-mirror-echo/#book )
Now, about DANCING EARTH Summer 2026 …
… the Movement of WorldMaking: Creation in Confluence ….
Vision + Intention :
Confluence of creative intercultural collaborations - for Movement of WorldMaking … Movement as a source of knowing… Movement ss medicine…. Movement is living : a vital force that brings organic migrations ( a remedio for the current anti immigration energy and xenophobia ) …
As Artistic Director, I also want to surface the inspiration of
an embodied collective response to Venice Biennale’s “ ‘In Minor Keys’ …
an invitation to “tune into the subtler emotional frequencies made possible by the arts”
to provide “a radical reconnection with art’s natural habitat and role in society,”
that of “the sensory, the effective, the subjective”
to platform artistic practices that are “generative and generous, that invite collaboration, alchemize, and radiate back to the ways that we are human together:
within “broader geopolitical context in claiming that the exhibition will provide “intimate and convivial universes that refresh and sustain even in terrible times.”
- quotes from ArtNet article on Venice Biennale
Our Confluence resonates in parallel , generating :
EBB sanctuary with ethos of converging for Rest ( for contemplation , attunement , listening , enchantment of the subtle magic of the everyday )
FLOW Shrines and Processions: collaborative creation of contemporary rituals that make embodied offerings to ground directly below each artist , or alternately the infinite space of migration, calling in ancestral and futuristic to the multi sensory present
WATERMARK imprint : spanning ephemeral to lasting with embrace of creative archives of all that body intuition can awaken
There are times to stand strong and fierce, and to also carry the ability to move like water. As a middle aged woman of color, there is an invisibility that I can feel in US society, that I now wield as a superpower , to be seen and unseen when I choose, to light blazing torches or soothe with calming waters. Maybe combine both for enchanting natural hotsprings visit during recreation time !
That’s what is igniting and flowing my dreamscape and landscape , and I invited you to join me for this collective dreaming, doing and being !
"Be Water, My Friend. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee
Reflecting into 2021, Dancing Earth News
Reflecting into 2021
In 2020, Dancing Earth was able to overcome immense challenges to launch unanticipated and innovative online offerings with creative resilience and joyous positivity. This is something we had only dreamed about in the past, but due to the constraints we had from the pandemic, we got down with our imaginations and drew this dream into reality.
Last of Fall Harvest 2020, Dancing Earth News
Last of Fall Harvest 2020, Dancing Earth News
Fall 2020 Events including: PPAK: Journeys in Native Food Sovereignty & BTW US Cyberspace, "Life Giving, Living +LIVE Closing Party!" November 20th. Tickets includes access to the live/synchronous stream on Nov 20th as well as five episodes released earlier this month. All content will be available for ticket buyers through Nov 30th.
BTW US Cyberspace: Dancing Earth Creates a World Together, Dancing Earth News
BTW US Cyberspace: Dancing Earth Creates a World Together, Dancing Earth News
Article by Tamara Johnson for Southwest Contemporary. "In a year of social distancing and division, global Indigenous dance company Dancing Earth uses digital space for creative gathering and (re)generation. The art they make convening “here” feels like contemporary ritual. Dancing Earth’s current work, BTW US Cyberspace, constructs and inhabits a liminal realm between tradition and technology."
Upcoming Events: PPAK & BTW US Cyberspace at UtahPresents, Dancing Earth News
Upcoming Events: PPAK & BTW US Cyberspace at UtahPresents, Dancing Earth News
“The next step, of the future, is the dance to be made by us all collectively, the energy of continual renewal… So the open portal of possibility is brought into the audience, for us all to dream and co-create together…“
Today’s LIVE Event at ASU Gammage, Dancing Earth News
Today’s LIVE Event at ASU Gammage, Dancing Earth News
Dancing Earth's BTW US CyberSpace, Preview. Presented by ASU Gammage. Watch it Live!
Artistic Director's Personal Statement of Identity, Rulan Tangen
PERSONAL STATEMENT OF IDENTITY
SUMMARY
Dancing Earth Founder and Artistic Director Rulan Tangen’s mixed ancestral heritage is Kampampangan and Pangasinan from Luzon Island, known colonially as part of Pacific archipelago of the Philippines, and Norweigian/Irish lineage, while she lives in the partition of Turtle Island which is often referred to as the U.S. For over four decades, Tangen has been invited into, and extended invitations for, collaborative work with global Indigenous artists and intergenerational community members locally and globally. Dancing Earth has been committed to working with Native American, global, and mixed Indigenous artists to support, nurture, and highlight diverse Indigenous embodied values and ways of being through creative artistic practice.
A Quick Note from Rulan Tangen, Dancing Earth News
A Quick Note from Rulan Tangen, Dancing Earth News
This is Rulan sending you a quick note because I am in the creation process, so super busy and super excited to invite you to our fall harvest of offerings! This is what we have been working towards since all our live performances were cancelled : a mini series of dynamic episodes evoking post-apocalyptic embodiment of the future, made by our artist/filmmakers with a virtual reality designer!
Revitalizing Autumnal Equilibrium, Dancing Earth News
Revitalizing Autumnal Equilibrium, Dancing Earth News
At this time of equinox, we reflect on the need for balance amongst all forms of life on earth. We reach out with our dances to heal, to hope, to ground, to question, to reach, to dream...as we pray for good health, clear air, and an end to the devastating fires raging across the west coast of the U.S.
Rulan Tangen joins The Bridge Virtual Dance Institute as a Guest Artist, Dancing Earth News
Rulan Tangen joins The Bridge Virtual Dance Institute as a Guest Artist, Dancing Earth News
The Bridge welcomes new guest artist Rulan Tangen. Rulan offers the session as an opening to ancient ideas of movement, sound and rhythm, as central to rituals for transformation, while embracing cyberspace as a realm of intercultural exchange and collaboration that paves the way to embodiment of imagined realm of liberation.
C5 Videos & Feedback, Cultural Collaborative Cyberspace Content Creation, Dancing Earth News
C5 Videos & Feedback - Cultural Collaborative Cyberspace Content Creation, Dancing Earth News
Videos from Screening C5 : Cultural Collaborative Cyberspace Content Creation. Enjoy these two digital dance work created during Dancing Earth's 2020 Online Summer Intensive, C5 : Cultural Collaborative Cyberspace Content Creation.
Feedback from Movement as Medicine Summer Institute 2020, Dancing Earth News
Feedback from Our Participants Movement as Medicine Summer Institute in the Cyberworld.
We are pleased celebrate our first amazingly courageous and intuitive Cohort of online Summer Institute participants; each depicted here in a devised form emerging from connection to qualities of empowerment.
We are so grateful, Thank You! Dancing Earth News
We are so grateful, Thank You! Dancing Earth News
As Founding Artistic Director of DANCING EARTH, I felt the great shift this year has brought: much loss, sorrow, pain and with it an opportunity for truth and for re-imagining. With support from our circle, we have been able to meet this challenge with creativity and collaboration, to meet the moment, and welcome, in online practices, an uplifting of our incredible artists and our communities.
"Joy" video by Madeline Rackerby, Dancing Earth News
"Joy" video by Madeline Rackerby, Dancing Earth News
"JOY" emerges as a ‘ Citizen Commission ‘ - coming from the mind and heart of the wondrously creative Alexandra Riggs Stivala who befriended Rulan when they were teenage ballet students at Marin Ballet, California.
