Event | Meandering River
A place-based, meandering journey with the Iowa River.
Sunday, May 18 · 6 - 8pm CDT
Lagoon Shelter House
230 North Riverside Drive Iowa City, IA 52242
Co-directed by Eric Gidal, Liz McTernan, Stephanie Miracle, Heather Parrish, Jenna Supp-Montgomerie
With Zena Bibler, Jean-Francois Charles, David Cwiertny, Ramin Roshandel, and Larry Weber
Featuring Sitso Ahlijah, Kristin Marrs, Sophia McLaughlin, Melinda Myers, Jenn Pray, Juliet Remmers, and Mikey Rioux
Meandering River, an immersive, site-specific performance, invites audiences to reimagine their relationship with the Iowa River through movement, sound, and guided exploration. Rooted in the idea of the hydrocommons as the dynamic relationship between water and bodies, this project offers a powerful, multi-sensory experience that explores the entangled ecologies of humans, nonhumans, and the infrastructures that shape our lived environment.
Participants will gather at the Lagoon Shelter House before embarking on a guided walking tour along the west bank of the Iowa River. Along the way, audiences will encounter dancers, soundscapes, and interactive prompts designed to heighten awareness of the river’s presence, history, and agency. This participatory journey invites a shift in perception: from viewing the river as a passive backdrop to recognizing it as an active, expressive force in our shared ecosystem.
The performance unfolds in a tone of progressive emergence—beginning with playful discovery and deepening into moments of focused attention and spacious presence. Audiences are encouraged to engage not just as spectators, but as co-creators, contributing through their movement, perception, and interaction with the environment and one another.
Meandering River is the result of a unique interdisciplinary collaboration among dancers, artists, scholars, hydro scientists, and engineers. It aims to explore the role of embodied participation in fostering deeper relationships with place, community, and the more-than-human world. Through this experience, participants are invited to cultivate lasting attentiveness to the living river—its layered histories, shifting geographies, and continued presence in our lives.
A second performance iteration is planned for September 20, 2025.
Support for this project was provided by:
The National Endowment for the Arts and the Iowa Arts Council, which exists within the Iowa Economic Development Authority
Public Arts Matching Grant City of Iowa City
The Big Field Fund, a Regional Regranting Program of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts administered by Public Space One.
UIowa BlueGap Project
UIowa Office of Sustainability and the Environment
UIowa Department of Religious Studies
UIowa Department of Communication Studies
UIowa Department of English