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�鶹��’s program, Rider Dances, will be spreading awareness about environmental sustainability for this year’s performance, titled “The Dance and Sustainability Project.” This project will be performed in collaboration with Artichoke Dance on Saturday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 10, at 2:00 P.M. in the Theater in the Bart Luedeke Center.

Dr. Kim Chandler-Vaccaro, director of Rider Dances, is collaborating with Lynn Neuman, director of NYC’s Artichoke Dance, an environmentally focused dance company based in New York, and Melissa Greenberg and Dr. Daniel Druckenbrod of Rider’s Office of Sustainability. The professionals at Artichoke will be dancing alongside Rider students for this performance.

“There will be six pieces with seven choreographers all collaborating on them, including me,” Vaccaro says. “We’re collaborating with the students to come up with gestures that relate to the idea of sustainability. We want to show that everything is connected, and we turn that into movement.”

“The Dance and Sustainability Project” goes beyond a work of art; it adds to the conversation about environmental sustainability through a visual experience, and communicates through movement. Vaccaro explains that, “Not everything is literal or verbal, and a lot of it actually comes from experience and communication. So we’re using a visual impression to get through to people.”

This performance also sets an example for environmentally-friendly solutions, as the designers for this project will be using only recycled products.

Vaccaro emphasizes the idea that creativity is a positive force that can make a change in the world, and that is what this performance aims for. She says that, “Our student dancers are excited about bringing awareness and understanding through this performance, because they’re bringing to the table a new way of looking at environmental sustainability.”

Through all these ways of spreading awareness, Dr. Kim Vaccaro is excited to share the information she has learned from personal experience and from this first-time collaboration with Artichoke Dance and Rider’s Office of Sustainability. She wants people to walk away from this performance willing to commit to change at least one environmentally-averse behavior in their everyday lives for the better.

Tickets are now available for $20 for adults, $15 for students and seniors, and $5 for �鶹�� students with a valid Rider ID. To purchase, contact the Box Office at 609-896-7775 or order .