Confluence
Confluence: Where Waters Meet – 2025 Green Lake Global Water Dances
CONFLUENCE (June ’25) is a series of performances and events designed to bring groundbreaking environmental arts engagement to Green Lake, Wisconsin, and surrounding communities.
Global Water Dances
Global Water Dances is an organization with a mission to connect and support a global community of choreographers and dancers, to inspire action and international collaboration for water issues through the universal language of dance.
Over 140 locations around the world host Global Water Dances events each year. On the same day, participants and audiences perform the same water-related movements around the world. Participating communities work to address local environmental issues through dance.
Why Green Lake?
Hello! I am Lily Selthofner, I graduated from Columbia University in NYC in May 2024, where I studied Dance and Anthropology. I graduated from Green Lake High School in 2020 and attended Green Lake Public School K-12. I am seeking to give back to the community of Green Lake and surrounding areas by organizing the first Global Water Dances in Green Lake, to be held on June 12-14th, 2025, at the Thrasher Opera House and outdoors.
For Sponsors
With your contribution, I can bring these events to our community for an accessible price, while paying artists adequately and raising meaningful donations for local arts and environmental organizations.
Contact me at selthofnerlily@gmail.com to contribute and with any questions. Your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!
Link to Go Fund Me Page – Donate Here!
Whooping Crane Sponsors ($1,000+)
As a bonus, Whooping Crane sponsors are offered a free commercial advertisement that we will film and incorporate into our events, alongside print brochure advertisements and thank you recognition in speeches at all of Confluence’s events.
Advertisements are an opportunity to share your organization and offerings, alongside being a great chance to support important causes while gaining exposure and celebrating the vibrant local community that makes the Green Lake area so special.
Monarch Sponsors ($500+)
Monarch Butterfly Sponsors will receive VIP Merchandise, including a tote bag with a local landscape painting design, art, prints, and 5 free seats!
Charity Initiatives
There will be several fundraising opportunities to support several local community, arts, and environmental organizations throughout the Confluence event series:
Thrasher Opera House / Green Lake Association (GLA) / Princeton Art Collective (PARC) / Freeland / Playground Park Fundraiser
Thrasher Opera House: Performances 6/12/25
“Freshwater” and “Vestige” at the Thrasher Opera House:
3 pm: matinee pay-what-you-wish live dress rehearsal of “Becoming Water” local dance youth performance, with sneak peeks of “Endangered”
5 pm: ticketed event with appetizers, cocktails, live music, art silent auction. Multimedia professional performance “Endangered” starts at 6 pm, featuring 4 NYC professional dancers, in collaboration wiht local Opera singers and musicians, alongside audio interview and video projection elements.
Outdoor All-Ages Dance Classes 6/13/25
On Friday, June 13th, there will be two workshops in Green Lake Park by the water. Participants are welcome to attend both workshops as participants or witnesses, and both workshops are open to all ages and abilities. These courses aim to revitalize our embodiment of water: the first workshop is centered on our connections with water, and the second flows into our connection to each other. There will be a talk-back and free dance space afterward as well!
Both workshops will also teach the simple audience participation dance that is fundamental to Global Water Dances, everyone does the same 4 dance moves around the globe!
Workshop 1: “From Drop to Ocean” 1-2 pm
The first workshop, called “From Drop to Ocean” (1-2 pm) begins with an immersive guided meditation, laying on the ground, guided journaling and drawing (materials provided), and dance. We will connect to the present environment through our senses, and travel back in time to the ancient glaciers that formed Green Lake, where we will explore the evolution of life through our cells and bodies, as drops in the collective ocean of being, to connect with ourselves and nature toward creating an empowering future.
Workshop 2: “Currents” 2-3 pm
The second workshop, called “Currents” (2-3 pm) will build on this momentum toward connective movement experiences. We will do light stretching and explore guided improvisational dancing to embody water. Then, we will explore spatial togetherness through a Movement Choir. We will learn the basics of contact improvisational dancing, and the workshop will end with a contact improvisation circle that can be watched or participated in.
Each workshop is 1 hour long, back to back. There will be live music for both workshops, and comfortable clothes and shoes, or going barefoot, is recommended. For the first workshop, bring a towel or blanket to lay on. For the second workshop, there will be physical contact, such as hand-holding and leaning. We will rotate through partners and small groups for these exercises, if you would prefer to only dance with people you know please attend with a partner or small group.
Global Water Dances Festivities 6/14/25
6/14 Free Outdoor Event in a Green Lake Park on the water 1:00-4:00 pm
From 1-3 pm, the event will feature educational speakers, face painting, free native plants, live music, vendors and bartering exchanges, and a community handprint mural in the shape of Green Lake
Then, from 3-4:30 pm will be an outdoor site-specific performance of “Freshwater” by local students, alongside excerpts of “Vestige” featuring professional dancers and musicians. These groups will then lead a fun and simple audience participation dance as well, the same dance moves that hundreds of participating communities around the world perform on the same day!
Art Productions to See:
NYC Professional Dance Performances: “Vestige”
Four NYC professional dancers will bring Green Lake’s ecosystems to life onstage at the Thrasher Opera House in Green Lake, Wisconsin on Thursday, June 12th. Join us at 5 pm for a night of appetizers, drinks, a silent art auction, and live music before the start of the show, which will begin at 6:00 pm. Tickets will be approximately $25.
With complex choreography and innovative costuming that embodies local endangered species, Green Lake’s endangered creatures become resilient artistic symbols, featuring sentimental solos, captivating duets, and athletically rigorous ensemble pieces. Two local professional Opera singers and two instrumentalists will perform original live music for the piece, alongside a vibrant set and accompanying visual projections.
“Vestige” will offer audiences a rejuvenating and empowering connection to the natural world. Further, research in biology and religion regarding animals, plants, and landscapes and their spiritual qualities in Indigenous and worldwide cultures will form a comprehensive and rigorous education interwoven into the piece, conveyed through multimedia, psychedelic artistic sensibilities that will have viewers at the edge of their seats. The plot will weave through momentous character arcs and profound emotional scenes, and the Opera will flow between many languages: English, Italian, and local Indigenous languages, and translated texts will be provided.
At exponentially severe rates, pollution and global warming-induced severe weather perpetuate global displacement and irreversible damage to ecosystems and communities. How do we respond? How do we meet our responsibility to be allies to the displaced? How do we create places of healing and unity? This glorious, heartwarming piece answers these questions by bringing a voice, and a dance, to the endangered.
The NYC professional dancers will also perform excerpts and sneak peeks of “Vestige” at the pay-what-you-wish live dress rehearsal for the local youth dance piece “What Does Water Want?” Similar excerpts can also be viewed at the local youth’s performance of their piece outdoors in its’ site-specific context for the Global Water Dances Day at a Green Lake Park on June 14th. The piece will also be shown in NYC.
Local Youth Dance Performances: “What Does Water Want?”
Local dancers of all ages are invited to partake in this creative process, where we explore the question “What Does Water Want?” through movement. Our rehearsals will result in two performances in downtown Green Lake.
Not only does this opportunity provide performances for local dancers, it also provides an exclusive opportunity to get to know professional dancers from NYC: to dance with them onstage, to take an outdoor class with them, hear rehearsal feedback, and have career talks.
- Thrasher Opera House: pay-what-you-wish live dress rehearsal, featuring a sneak peek of the NYC professional dance piece “Endangered” on Thursday, June 12 at 3pm
- Green Lake Park: Outdoor performance during the Global Water Dances Event on Saturday, June 14th
Film Screening: “The Water Spirit”
Made by Lily Selthofner and Charles Caestecker
In “Water Spirit,” a mystical Water Spirit rises from Green Lake’s (Daychola’s) depths to confront the environmental challenges endangering this home. The Spirit’s journeys highlights beloved local landmarks as she becomes popular, but then faces comedic misunderstandings, arrest, and a solitary reckoning in Judson Tower. Along the journey, the Water Spirit and the community learn to share responsibility—and hope—toward restoring environmental harmony.
The film will be 5-15 minutes long and will be screened alongside the performance of “Vestige” at the Thrasher, and will be later viewable online.
Musical scoring for the film will be co-created alongside interested local student musicians and choir students.
More Information
Confluence (n.)
Confluence: where waters meet. A merging and flowing together, especially of rivers or streams: the point of juncture, the combined stream formed by this juncture. It can also refer to a gathering, meeting, or blending of people or things.
Confluence in nature: biomimicry, ecotones, root systems interweaving underground, blood vessels meeting at capillaries, highways, neural pathways branching, river deltas into estuaries, lineage, migration routes crossing and merging, branches the sum of tree trunks, evolution
More about Global Water Dances
The History of Green Lake
Ancient glaciers melted and carved the area of Green Lake – wetlands, cliffs, rolling hills, and rocks. Green Lake, named Daycholah in Winnebago, the language of the Ho-Chunk Nation is the deepest natural inland lake in Wisconsin, with water 237 feet deep with 27 miles of shoreline. It’s said that Daycholah is home to the Water Spirit, making it a place where Indigenous people throughout present-day Wisconsin and beyond have visited, worshipped, and celebrated for countless years. Some say that one must bring gifts to the Water Spirit, who lives under the lake, to enter. The Water Spirit of Green Lake is known to swirl her arms up, to drown enemies. Green Lake’s primary outflow is the Puchyan River – whose name is derived from Winnebago pai-ja, ‘heron.’The lake and river are filled with some of the most diverse ecosystems in the US– life-rich marshy wetlands and many animals in seasonal migration. Today, the City of Green Lake, a population of 1,001, is situated along the lake’s northeast shore at the Puchyan’s outflow. (read the full text with sources here)
Guiding Quotes
“If everyone speaks at the same time, it is chaos. If everyone moves together at the
same time, that can create a sense of closeness and community, people can have a sense of shared purpose and empowered action.”– Marylee Hardenburgh, co-founder of Global Water Dances
“Ceremonies are how we remember to remember.” “To have agency in the world, ceremonies should be reciprocal co-creations, organic in nature, in which the community creates ceremony and the ceremony creates communities.”
– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (17, 346)
Community, Artistic, and Environmental Engagement Goals
Community Goals:
-Provide an opportunity for community members to increase feelings of embodied connection with the Green Lake ecosystems, the wider community population, and with visual and performance art
-Attract, serve, and involve a diverse array of participants of surrounding community residents of all ages, backgrounds, abilities, and artistic/environmental interest levels through accessible, confluent programming. We will work with assisted living centers, schools, dance studios, and more. We seek to excite youth toward further education and the pursuit of the arts through validating and engaging experiences
-Unite and empower the community through constructive dialogue that fosters responsibility
-Capture the essence of the community in the snapshot of the present time with film, audio, and performance elements, for future generations to cherish, and to share with the world.
Artistic goals:
-Create local art opportunities in dance performances, music, and visual arts, with multilevel frameworks to match individual participation desires and generate growth for many local artists
-Stimulate local performance arts appreciation and economy
-Create compelling, professional-quality dance & music performances that capture the unique beauty of Green Lake by spotlighting local endangered species to gain perspective and call to action on global issues
-Provide immersive, connective, elevated experiences for the community, as ways to give back
Environmental Goals:
-Raise awareness: Educate about environmental and community responsibility, endangered species, habitat restoration, and water ecosystems. Foster interconnection between community, creativity, and ecosystem
-Educational events and programming: hands-on events that organically generate a reciprocal relationship with the natural world
-Designing innovative curricula with community experts that emphasize connections between systemic destructive practices, and habitat loss and displacement experienced by both humans and animals around the globe. For example, exploring links between natural disasters, industrial war complexes, pollution, settler colonialism, fossil fuels, and global displacement — alongside centering accessible action steps to be a responsible place-maker toward healing the Earth and our communities.
-Raise funds, donate proceeds to various local arts, environmental, and community organizations
For Artistic Participants and Collaborators
For assisted living facilities
Hello! If your assisted living facility is in the wider area of Green Lake County, I would love to bring arts programming to your residents for this series. These are our offerings, and we adapt to individual and organizational interests and can visit once or multiple times.
– Dance performances with local youth (water-related dance)
-Accessible dance follow-along workshops for residents
– Collecting audio and transcribed interviews on favorite life memories in the local area (will be used in dance pieces and film soundscores, with the goal of memorializing messages to family and future humanity)
For local schools and teachers
Hello! I am seeking high school or college educators, activists, and environmental enthusiasts in the Green Lake area, to speak at events, and help create materials that supplement the missions of this event, Confluence, and the wider Global Water Dances missions.
I am especially seeking those with knowledge of local ecosystems toward hands-on community engagement initiatives alongside informational curricula. I am also looking for locals with a passion for social justice and inclusivity through innovative, impactful education.
For local professional Opera singers and musicians
Hello! I am seeking two professional Opera singers who are locally based, primarily for the piece “Vestige” but also for the full events programming — preferably one male, one female voice, or one high one low voice. I am also seeking at least two local instrumentalists, in strings such as harp, cello, violin, piano, etc.
If you are interested in participating and have adequate abilities, but play a different instrument or practice a different style of singing, or are an actor or spoken word artist, please do not hesitate to reach out as well. My goal is to include as many people as possible according to each individual’s desired extent of involvement and I would love to involve everyone who is interested!
For local youth dancers
Hello! I am seeking young local dancers of all ages who are interested in many different fun events and exciting performance opportunities.
Performance Opportunities: “Freshwater”
Performance piece: “Freshwater”
-Offering solos to anyone interested, alongside contact improvisation, partnering, and choreography-building rehearsal workshops
-Performances are at Thrasher Opera House in Green Lake, Wisconsin in a pay-what-you-wish live dress rehearsal, and the final performance is outdoors at the Green Lake Global Water Dances Festivities on June 14, where young dancers will perform, and lead audience participation dances.
– These performance opportunities will be an exclusive and rare chance to work closely with New York City professional dancers of many different styles, talking to them and performing alongside them onstage and outdoors for audiences!
One-time workshops, films, and festivities
For young creatives who can’t commit to a rehearsal process but would still like to take part, there are many options.
– Embodying Water 1-time workshop (film footage featured in “What Does Water Want?”) – date and location to be announced
-Performances: Attend “What Does Water Want” and “Endangered” 6/12
– Classes: connect with nature through dance at the outdoor all-ages dance classes on 6/13/25: “From Drop to Ocean” and “Currents”
– Event: Join the Global Water Dances Festivities on 6/14, add a handprint to the community mural, enjoy live music, and participate in the group dances!
For local youth singers and musicians
I am seeking local youth singers and musicians who would like to work collaboratively to contribute to a film score for “The Water Spirit.” If anyone is interested in live performance opportunities, I am happy to accommodate that as well!
For professional dancers
NYC Dancers! Hello! “Vestige” is going to be exquisite and I would love to have you in it. Here’s an outline of the rehearsal process:
Roles will include solos, duets, trios, and ensemble (approximately four dancers).
-Zoom online rehearsals and video choreography to learn
– In-person rehearsals in NYC in late May and early June
– Wisconsin travel from the night of Tuesday 6/10 to Sunday 6/15
