Dance of the Cosmos: Exploring our cosmic origins and integrity through performative arts

The use of performative art for teaching about the reality of our cosmic immersion and identity is a powerful lever of transformative consciousness through culture. People are fascinated by both the physics and the psychological implications of our own and our planetary cosmic origins. Carl Sagan vastly popularized the understanding of our origins as “Star Stuff” and yet the profound reality of this stellar ancestry continues to fascinate and expand people’s consciousness. That the amino acids which imbue life and living systems on Earth, as well as the water that saturates our planet, originated from comets and asteroids like those sourced from comet Bennu, intrigue the inquisitive mind seeking its own identity. Further, that we are incessantly and perpetually immersed in the radiation from the first impulses of our universe, via the Cosmic Microwave Background, is a potent magnet impelling the individual awareness to inquire deeper into our integrity with the Universe as a whole, and subsequently the integrity of the global and universal eco and biosystems. These realities can be elegantly communicated to both youth and the general public through performative arts; dance in particular can be used as an immediate story telling devise to communicate these realities in an impactful and inspirational way, both engaging the thinking mind and the culturally resonant intuitive capacities. This presentation explores a series of astronomically based motifs that can be, or have been utilized to inspire an experiential understanding of our integrity with cosmos.