Can dancing prepare democracy for dystopia? | Nicholas Rowe | TEDxBodø

Key Concepts

• Dystopia: A world where meaning and purpose have ended, even if physical existence continues.
• Climate Displacement: Forced migration due to climate change and related disasters.
• Transilience: The ability to adapt, change, and flourish in new environments, contrasting with mere resilience.
• Sumud: Palestinian concept of steadfast resistance against oppression, fostering collective vision and agency.
• Cultural Democracy: Inclusive and equitable participation in cultural creation and meaning-making.
• Mafana: Tongan/Samoan word for the enlivened energy felt during creative interaction.
• Mishmakul: Arabic word signifying the inconceivable, prompting imaginative boundaries.
• Ethics of Creativity: Recognizing the political implications of creative choices – who creates, how, and why.

The End of the World is Already Here: Climate Displacement, Culture, and Transilience

The talk begins with a personal anecdote about the speaker’s daughter, Sama, expressing a desire for a catastrophic end to the world – an asteroid impact – as a means of escaping grief and the burden of mourning. This seemingly morbid wish serves as a starting point to explore the concept of “the end of the world” not as physical annihilation, but as the loss of meaning, purpose, and belonging. The speaker, Nicholas Rowe, posits that the true “end of the world” is a dystopia where life continues, but the foundations of a meaningful existence have crumbled.

The Scale of Displacement & The Approaching Crisis

Rowe highlights that this experience of a lost world is already a daily reality for over 80 million people globally, displaced by political, economic, or natural disasters. He emphasizes the accelerating nature of this displacement, predicting that up to 1 billion people could be displaced by climate change by 2050. This mass movement will result in unprecedented cultural mixing, potentially leading to a future where a child’s first and last understood words are in different languages, experiencing constant acculturation. He stresses that climate change is indiscriminate, impacting all strata of society and leading to encounters with diverse populations.

From Ballet to Community: A Personal Journey

Rowe then shares his personal journey, transitioning from a classical ballet dancer with the Finnish National Ballet to a community dance facilitator. A pivotal moment occurred during a performance of La Sylphide in Helsinki, where he questioned the artificiality and enforced sameness of classical ballet, recognizing its inherent political implications. This led him to abandon that career, travel extensively, and ultimately dedicate himself to community dance – a practice he found empowering and inclusive. He sought to work in “locations of political failure,” where governments had failed to uphold basic human rights, believing that creative collaboration could foster flourishing and new societal visions. He acknowledges his linguistic shortcomings, but expresses a deep love for words, specifically highlighting “mishmakul” (inconceivable in Arabic) as a word that expands imaginative boundaries.

The Ethics of Representation: Manila & The Calvario

Rowe recounts an experience in a squatters camp in Manila, Philippines, where a theater group attempted to recreate the Stations of the Cross for Good Friday. He describes how the residents, living amidst rubbish, created deeply personal and meaningful art from found objects. However, the director deemed their performance “not suffering enough” for the media and replaced it with staged, agonized postures. This incident was a crucial awakening for Rowe, illustrating the “ethics of creativity” – the political choices inherent in who gets to create, how, and for what purpose. He realized that creativity is inherently political.

Sumud & Transilience: Lessons from Palestine

His work in the occupied Palestinian territories for eight years further shaped his understanding. He introduces the concept of sumud – a Palestinian practice of steadfast resistance against ethnic cleansing and apartheid. He critiques the Western concept of “resilience” as a neoliberal justification for austerity and continued suffering, contrasting it with transilience. While resilience implies toughening up to withstand hardship, transilience emphasizes adaptation, growth, and the creation of new, complex features to thrive in changing environments. He argues that the Palestinian experience demonstrates the power of sumud and transilience in generating collective vision and agency. He notes that sumud is often mistranslated as resilience, but is fundamentally different, representing active resistance and regeneration.

The Role of Arts Education in a Changing World

Rowe concludes by emphasizing the crucial role of arts education in preparing individuals and communities for the challenges of climate displacement and a rapidly changing world. He argues that participatory arts provide a space for encountering strangeness, generating new meanings, and fostering a sense of belonging. Within the Horizon Europe project “intric,” he is exploring how to broaden access to arts education to build transilience and prepare for the future. He returns to the image of his daughter and her wish for an asteroid, suggesting that even in the face of overwhelming challenges, agency and the power of imagination offer a path beyond simply enduring the “end of the world.”

Notable Quote:

“Creativity is political. Choices are made about where creativity can happen, how creativity can happen, who can be creative, and who gets to choose who can be creative.” – Nicholas Rowe

Data & Statistics:

• 80 million+: People currently displaced globally due to political, economic, or natural disasters.
• 1 billion: Projected number of people displaced by climate change by 2050.

Synthesis:

Nicholas Rowe’s talk powerfully argues that the “end of the world” isn’t a singular catastrophic event, but a continuous process of displacement and loss of meaning. He advocates for a shift from a focus on mere “resilience” to transilience – the ability to adapt, grow, and create new possibilities in the face of adversity. He highlights the importance of cultural democracy, ethical creativity, and arts education in fostering this transilience and building a more just and sustainable future, drawing lessons from his experiences working with communities facing displacement and oppression around the world. The core message is one of agency and the power of collective imagination to shape a future beyond the dystopia of a lost world.