Confluence
Confluence: Where Waters Meet – 2025 Green Lake Global Water Dances
CONFLUENCE is a series of performances and events designed to bring environmental arts engagement through dance to the local Wisconsin community!
Performances:
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.
For Sponsors
With your contribution, I can bring these events to our community for accessible and free prices, while paying artists and raising donations for local arts and environmental organizations. Donations are currently being matched up to $500!
Contact me at art.lily.selthofner@gmail.com to contribute and with any questions.
Further, if you’d be interested in supporting a specific group involved in Confluence Events, such as sponsoring tickets for one or more shows, or donating directly to education initiatives, or supporting artists, please reach out!
Whooping Crane Sponsors ($1,000+)
Whooping Crane Sponsors receive a tote bag with a local landscape painting design, art prints, 4 free seats to the June 12th evening show, and:
Whooping Crane business sponsors are offered a free film commercial advertisement, for their use and that we will show at 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 2 free seats to the June 12th evening show!
Charity Initiatives
There will be several fundraising opportunities to support several local community, arts, and environmental organizations throughout the Confluence event series:
Green Lake Association (GLA) / Princeton Art Collective (PARC) / Freeland / Playground Park Fundraiser
More Information
More About 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.
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)
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)
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
Community, Artistic, and Environmental Engagement Goals
Community Goals:
-Provide an opportunity for community members to increase feelings of embodied connection with art, ecosystems, and community
-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 work with retirement homes, schools, dance studios, museums, 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 artistic dialogue to foster connection, empowerment, and 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, elevated, professional-quality dance & music performances that capture the unique beauty of Green Lake, the Fox River, and more
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, charity initiatives to various local arts, environmental, and community organizations
Films (in progress):
Princeton Historical Society Documentary
Made by Lily Selthofner and Jessie Simmers
This documentary captures the Princeton Historical Society as they prepare for their Grand Opening in July 2025. Featuring interviews with the PHS Founders, highlights of artifacts throughout the Museum, and insider stories, this documentary will be available on the Princeton Historical Society’s webpage. Highlights of water memories and water-related artifacts will inform and inspire aspects of the performance arts pieces. There will be showings of relevant highlights from the documentary with performances. Further, there will be a research paper (15-40 pages) diving into BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ histories in the area.
Film: “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 highlight 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 responsibility—and hope—toward restoring environmental harmony.
The film will be 3-7 minutes long and will be screened alongside performances, and will be later viewable online.
Musical scoring for the film will be co-created alongside interested local student musicians and choir students.
For Artistic Participants and Collaborators
For local singers and musicians
Hello! I am seeking two to four singers who are locally based, primarily for the piece “Vestige” but also for the full events programming. I am also seeking two local instrumentalists.
If you are interested in participating, as a singer, musician, actor, or spoken word artist, are please reach out as well art.lily.selthofner@gmail.com. I would love to involve everyone interested!
For local youth singers and musicians
I am seeking local youth singers and musicians, college or high school students, who would like to work collaboratively to contribute to a film score and/or live performance.
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.
-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)