Freshwater is vital to human life and societal well-being (Baron et al. 2001), but its quality and quantity are being threatened at the global and local scales (Gleick 2014). Indeed, recognition of a growing global freshwater crisis resulted in the United Nations calling 2013 the International Year of Water Cooperation. Water provides numerous ecosystem services (i.e., benefits that nature provides free of charge to society), including drinking water, pollution purification, navigation, agriculture, fisheries, aesthetics, and habitat (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005).

There is no panacea when it comes to public education, as evidenced by the current debate over charter and schools of choice (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/vouchers/choice/). New ideas and approaches need to be developed. To that end, GVSU faculty members from Dance (Hannah Seidel), Music (Sookkyung Cho), and AWRI (Al Steinman) have joined forces to collaborate on a novel approach to raise awareness about freshwater.

Dr. Al Steinman has collaborated with GVSU faculty members Dr. Sookkyung Cho, and Hannah Seidel to create “Sub-Merge: Raising Water Awareness Through Science, Music, and Dance”.

Sub-Merge features the performances of five newly commissioned musical compositions created by Teddy Niedermaier, Daniel Temkin, and Jeremy Crosmer, which complement piano compositions by Gabriel Faure and Dmitri Shostakovich. Musicians included Sookyung Cho (piano: GVSU), Hong-Yi Mo (violin: Detroit Symphony Orchestra), Jeremy Crosmer (cello: Detroit Symphony Orchestra), and GVSU students Natalie Evancoe, Courtney Saunders, Zach Forsleff, and Rebekah Shomsky as the FOURtepiano 8-hand ensemble.

Dance choreography was created by Hannah Seidel with professional dancers Courtney Drasner and Kristy Kuhn from NYC, as well as GVSU students Olivia Karenas, Ross Lindhout, Ryan Schwaar, and Victoria VanderPlas.

Science narration was written by Al Steinman with oration by Roger Ellis.