Artichoke Dance Company will present Immersive Performance Tours of Gowanus on Saturday, June 17, and Sunday, June  18, with a second opportunity on June 24 and 25, 2023. This experience combines an informational walking tour with interactive experiences and site performances, beginning at the Old Stone House in Park Slope.

The tour brings audiences to sites in Gowanus that are significant to the superfund remediation of the canal and the rezoning of the neighborhood, both of which are currently underway. At stops along the way, Artichoke Dance Company performs dance works that physicalize the geography’s significance, reflecting on the place and envisioning a sustainable future. Area community organizers from the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice and Brooklyn Movement Center lead the walking tour, illuminating the neighborhood’s history and present-day realities from an environmental justice perspective.

“Gowanus is rapidly changing from an historical industrial past with a legacy of pollution to a mix of housing, retail, recreational and light manufacturing venues. This performance tour brings people into contact with the area’s history and its potentiality, envisioning Gowanus as a resilient, interconnected and equitable community, the type of which is needed to face the challenges of climate change,” reflects Artichoke Dance Company’s Director Lynn Neuman, who has been active in the community for over a decade. “As a community, we fought really hard to garner benefits for Gowanus through the rezoning and now we are working to ensure that the vision we developed of Gowanus, as an environmentally just area, comes to fruition.”

This is Artichoke Dance Company’s fifth production highlighting Gowanus and involving area residents and organizations. Brooklyn Utopias Along the Canal, held in 2022, Just Gowanus, held in 2021, the Gowanus Visions Festival of Art and Action, held in 2019, and Global Water Dances on the Gowanus Canal, held in 2017, also collaborated with local environmentally focused and community based organizations and artists to bring awareness to, and involvement in, Gowanus.

Partners for the Immersive Performance Tour of Gowanus include The Old Stone House, Gowanus Canal Conservancy, Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice and Gowanus Dredgers. Tickets are $30 and available online at artichokedance.org/events. Tours last approximately 2 hours and travel ¾ mile.