The profession of dance is naturally one of the most environmentally friendly careers in the world. This is due to the fact that our bodies are our profession, our instruments. We use virtually no equipment or disposable products in our daily lives. I think the most waste a dancer makes is from all the laundry we have to do because of the sweaty clothes we end up with after long days of rehearsal.

If we took this philosophy  into the rest of our lives we might live in a less wasteful way or what could be know as a Zero Waste Life.  “Zero Waste is a philosophy that encourages the redesign of resource’s life cycles so that all products are reused. Any trash sent to landfills is minimal. The process recommended is one similar to the way that resources are reused in nature.”

To say it simply Zero Waste is reusing and recycling any products or resources we would think of throwing away or wasting. Since we do this so easily as individual dancers, maybe the dance community as a whole should adopt a philosophy of Zero Waste.

Read more about Zero Waste in this NYtimes Article

Nudging Recycling From Less Waste to None

A friend showed me these two videos of the joy of dance. There’s a little cheese factor in both but sometimes the cheese factor can be beautiful. I hope they both put smiles on your faces like they did mine.

Degas’ painting the Green Dancers was done between 1877-1879.