Under the direction of Emma Bartolomucci, Toronto based dance company Dance Fachin creates narrative driven works that make dance theatre accessible and engaging. In their newest piece, The Fourth R, Dance Fachin fuses climate science, dance, and video projections into an energizing presentation that addresses global warming. We chatted with Emma about The Fourth R and its mission to inspire young people to become climate advocates for the planet.

Hi Emma! You define yourself as an artist and climate activist. How do these two titles inform

and merge with one another?

Becoming an artist has been a lifelong journey. I was born into a family of musicians who were really passionate about giving me the best training. I danced competitively at the Canadian Dance Company for 10 years, I went to acting intensives in the summer and studied voice and piano before school would start in the morning. It was intense for many years and I made a great career out of it. Throughout this, I was always passionate about nature and the environment. During the pandemic though, I started to take a deep dive into just how bad the climate crisis is and it became my primary focus. The human inequities, the resource scarcity and the CO2 emissions are just too big to ignore. My medium is art but my message is one of environmentalism and ecological advocacy.

Tell us a little bit about Dance Fachin and your new piece The Fourth R.

Dance Fachin aims to create shows with a dance narrative, it’s like a play but instead of words we use music. The company's dance style is a fusion of classical technique and hiphop with structured scenes that have a strong beginning, middle and end. This fusion of dance and theatre– although renegade in nature – is a fresh tool which can be utilized to engage an audience. The fundamental technique from ballet, matched with the grounded thrust of hip hop, alongside elements of driving jazz dance make for an amalgamation of some of the best movements from each genre. Dance Fachin incorporates dynamic music that engages the audience, making technical dance a more accessible art form for mainstream patrons. The company’s mission is to tell politically charged stories that challenge the capitalistic and oppressive nature of our society. Our current work, THE FOURTH R: reduce, reuse, recycle, REVOLUTIONIZE is an interdisciplinary show fusing climate science, dance and video projections together. This work highlights the ways in which capitalism affects our environment. The piece revolves around characters who are emblematic of three major players in this crisis. Those that produce, those that consume and those that will inevitably suffer. By the end of the play, the characters are defined by their ability to empathize with one another.

The Fourth R project has been selected by Toronto City Council to participate in a 6 month mentorship for Women4Climate. Congratulations! Can you tell us more about what this means and what the mentorship will involve?

We have been selected through the Toronto City Council to participate in the mentorship program for Women4Climate. Women4Climate was an initiative made by C40; a collection of 40 city mayors coming together to take action on the climate crisis. The mentorship aims to highlight the key role women play in championing climate action in cities. Through this six month mentorship, the project will be developed by local and national climate professionals and experts. The long term goal for the project is to have the presentation tour every April/May for the next five years, working with schools to incorporate more climate focus into their school community. Our hope is that when a school brings the Fourth R to their school, they pledge to become an eco school; participating in composting programs, boomerang lunches, initiatives to encourage carpooling/biking/busing to school and celebrating or starting an eco club. If children don't learn about the importance of sustainability, how can we expect them to grow into adults that will care? The Fourth R will be touring and working with schools in partnership with Women4Climate with the intention of the schools you visit pledging to become eco schools and implementing green initiatives.

Why do you think art can be a powerful tool for inspiring young people to become advocates for the planet? My main mission is to make environmentalism really cool and really attractive to young people. I want them to watch my show and be so moved, so inspired that they take on these values of environmentalism and implement them in their daily lives. We achieve this by using really cool music, demonstrating extreme enthusiasm and energy through our movement. We make it look cool to care.

Storytelling is a big part of your work as an artist. How do you go about getting a narrative across clearly in interdisciplinary works that incorporate multiple elements like The Fourth R?

Being specific and clear in my intention really helps the artists I work with understand what I am trying to convey. Which in turn communicates with the audience clearly. Being specific about what I’m saying, how I want the audience to feel, and what I want them to take away from the performance is crucial to making an empowering work.

I understand you took courses throughout the pandemic that helped you approach this project and narrative from a more scientific lens. What were these courses? What were the biggest takeaways from what you learned?

The pandemic was so rough, but there were a couple of positives and one for me was time. I finally had the time I needed to study about the capitalist economic system we’re forced into and its dependency on fossil fuels. I took a course from Yale called Moral Foundations in Politics and Greening Our Economy: Sustainable Cities Course from Lund University in Sweden. I would say there were two big takeaways for me. The first being that this information is important to ingest but the real work is the implementation and you do that by joining committees and getting involved locally. The second being that all the climate research and policies has been in circulation for decades. We know everything there is to know about the climate crisis but if citizens aren’t demanding these policies be implemented from their governments or workplaces, it’s not going to be important on a systemic level.

In what ways can people employ the fourth R - REVOLUTIONIZE - in their own lives?

It’s important to recognize how colonialism and white supremacy has completely dominated our society and systems. The root of the climate crisis is white supremacy, it’s capitalism. It’s taking and taking and taking and never giving time for things to grow back properly or naturally. If Indigenous culture was more at the forefront of our societies, you can bet that we’d be in a much better climate situation. We need to decolonize our minds and imagine a future where we share resources responsibly without the priority of money. The application of this in our daily lives can be simple things like, eating animal productions in moderation, bringing your reusables for water/coffee/takeout, taking public transportation whenever possible, carpooling, being conservative with using energy in your home (flicking off lights, not letting the water run, using heat/cooling only when necessary), boycotting harmful brands and buying locally, buying things with less packaging. Basically living a life of gratitude, understanding the harmful ecological impact that humans have on the environment and trying to lessen the load wherever possible.

Dance Fachin on Fusing Climate Science and Dance to Revolutionize and Inspire