F L O E

only ice knows

only ice knows 〜

An ice-based performance on the climate crisis

Weber County Ice Sheet

Saturday, February 8th, 2025

6:30pm

devised by Sarah Grunnah Brew

FLOE meditates upon the climate crisis through the lens of ice: what ice knows is an epic poem only beginning to be told. FLOE is a collaboration between theatre, dance, skating, and creative writing: what melts melds. The skaters and dancers engage with glacial field recordings and experimental musics: embodiments of wilder, firmer times--of hobbling entrapment as the world warms--and of regenerative hope for what might rise after the flood. The poetry proceeds along crooked rills, catching at these themes through devotion to sound as sense. FLOE is flow: an urgent surge of watery electricity. 

(1) ‘Arctic Ice’ / Skater Ensemble
(2) ‘F I R N’ / Cameron Claire
(3) ‘Cavernous Drops’ + ‘Zinal Glacier’ / Dancers + Poet
(4) ‘Erosion’ / Skater Ensemble
(5) ‘Melting Giant’ / Seebie Baga
(6) ‘Murmures’ / Skater Ensemble + Dancers + Poet
(7) ‘In the Rain’ / Sarah Grunnah Brew
(8) Icescapes / Skater Ensemble + Dancers
(9) Poet
(10) ‘Separation’ / Skater Ensemble

Skaters

Seebie Baga
Sarah Grunnah Brew
Cameron Claire
Collaboratively choreographed

Dancers

Alisha Erasmus
Vitoria Beatriz Menegaz
Sydney Shaefer
Mallory Valenzuela
Cadence Christensen (understudy)
Choreography by Rebekah Guerra

Poetry

by Abraham Smith

  • before big ice

    ethereal tallow crust

    before the big ice melts

    here's a firmness for

    standing and rising

    for mad dancing

    astral inlay

    stunned into expansion

    floe for the clean

    for the carom

    for the timeless

    the restless

    floe for the rustle

    for stagger walk

    for drag a shore and

    with the lancing hook of

    smoke sweetening desire

    floe for leaf button burnin

    floe to the mailbox

    about a mile off

    and the gravel eyes

    got the gavel judge

    got a good guess

    at the bills to pay

    gonna blow my nose

    on coarse numbers

    floe for a stethoscope

    mirage around mastodon hair

    floe for microphone

    cashless pocket

    shallow cross cloth

    floe for this pocketdial

    gift of you alone

    walking the pharmacy

    on an aloe hunt

    winter hands

    chaff and touching

    starts sparks

    it's touching how few

    scoops there are

    how good it is

    to be bored

    enough to future future   

    out walkin when love

    fails tug at vast

    clear to your crystal chin

    are you in it now?

    in the skull of

    one lumberin mastodon 

    pine for one leg

    birch for another

    beech for another

    this one loblolly on loan

    ice how it's meltin

    slush sink a mirth now

    the foretold dance now

    the bubbles trapped squirm  

    under thin encagements austere

    bubble got some rub game

    ah friction air

    go ask castle rock 

    fetter to floe

    you've got that

    upside down now

    fetter so freely now

    fetter with your left now

    marble constancy dare now

    nondominant feather now

    father shaves

    with frozen leaves now

    brush those pearlies

    my dears with bashful cattails now

    cousin the milkweed

    caught on a raspberry's

    porcupine spine now

    statuesque this past

    what's martial what's marble

    we drag these effigies

    of the great thinkers

    dead early through snow  

    the great drinker thinkers

    through snow floe floe fetter

    fetter fetter floe

    it is well to consider

    the feeling of taking off

    a sweater for three

    merry thousand years

    air belly aware plasma jitter

    smoke ring in a soap bubble

    finch full steam

    at the picture window

    rap raps 

    all that we cannot

    seem to escape

    in our efforts to be  

    burst first last free

  • telescope isinglass

    dig down dig down

    marauders and paupers

    and kings and bees

    dig to no time

    twirl a time when

    makes no sense

    and i quote

    water water everywhere

    and i anecdote

    when plants were

    handled with mouths

    only and teeth grew

    wide as redwood

    trunks to handle

    the masticatin

    the bestiary the nightly news

    fulsome this sluicing

    fulsome this everything

    fish to person

    coin in the gullet

    azure is a confectioner

    calving flame  

    cow with a cape

    digs a hole for

    the matador

    by eating

    the belly will tell you

    the nature of wandering

    fulsome this sluicing

    fulsome this everything

    person to fish

    gullet gotta be

    that tall

    for sunflower

    transportation

    fashion extinction

    tincture past theory

    verb seems burble

    these wings made

    to sass back at how

    seeds are born

    for falling

    where it's creased

    it's water walking

    where it's flat

    we invite all the wisteria moods

    in all the tongues and

    we shall walk

    upon the daisy noses

    of the tellers

    northern lights

    knead the names

    into fish eye dark

    gape agape

    are you beginning to

    sense the rules?

    there is no measure

    spannable

    the knuckle rapped

    the abacus failing

    they were grapes not beads

    and the wires grew sticky

    and the flies

    won't quit coming

    how do you say

    the ants

    in houseboat boots

    shall inherit?

    how do you say

    the burn heals

    by codger wash?

    adjust yr eyes

    mother time

    give yr ears

    a twist is this a citrus

    tree out walking?

    the roots playin

    like a puppet heron

    i see now

    fulsome sluicing

    for dessert we shall have

    a cavebear tongue

    breast of the penguin

    for cravat

    eastern wahoo handlebar tophat

    simpson's cupgrass map to zero

    poor lattice shatter home

    castle lake caddisfly good eve

    great auk good long nite

    golden toad awkward bow

    caribbean monk seal gargle the zip

    california condor louse pinch yrself yr nada

    st helena olive for ghost smoke spear

    muledeer grunt monocle 

    this piece of war

    one wafer dissolving

    the staff of cripes

    a monstrous showing

    everything at once is

    and cannot be  

    and is a piece of

    rain in pieces

    sky arrayed in clear teeth

    what washes will take

    why rain has a way

    of talking everything

    into talking like rain

    ice to no ice in the rain 

    tick to eternal tickle

    in the rain

    how she journeys

    jonah style

    cloud belly astronaut

    over land shaped

    by what no eye

    has seen

     

  • for rebird

    flood for redraw

    the animal

    standstill is fine for

    father rhyme

    but this one needs leaping

    flood for cur a home

    flood for cure

    for choir

    for sing their teeth out

    for teeth seeds

    for tule tree seeds

    for sagrada familia seeds

    for the bees bombarding

    in a ticklish hide-and-seek with countin

    flood for plump curd

    flood for lazy finger rotary dial

    see doubt is a petulant creep

    eatin fried fishers

    outta weeper plastics

    flood for new green talkin

    flood for my cane is in this new growth i know

    flood for wash the teeth

    for clean mouth speak hope sound

    for try again

    flood for you've got this

    for pull another card

    flood for name forgot

    for law in chalk

    potato geode emptied

    by the ham

    of the hand

    ham radio sayin

    somethin about

    do you remember

    the cheshire flyin squirrel?

    flood for amnesia abjure

    flood for golden fish

    ears for hearts

    for little babyteeth

    of cold rising

    through heat

    flood for we live

    in the tree we pray to

    heart saga

    fiery survivals

    the mirror eaten

    by the stone

    part our hairs

    with our hands

    once cupped around

    lips to blow on fire

    reprisals revivals

    muddy reflections

    flooding greys

    and flooding browns

    both our mouths open

    all of us now

    monkey pumpkins

    magpieing 

    open arms

    bellybuttons

    stretching wider

    can we call this

    natal smile

    call these mouths caves

    call teeth stone

    scored by ice

    flood for sound  no

    floe for hush now and

    what is the first word?

    first fettering note first song

    at the mooring

    we are needing nestling

    for starting for starters 

    the sound of leaping

    jumpercable jumprope

    a near silent fire  

    the falling welter  

    are you guessin with me?

    good umbrella pop satisfy  

    good wings yes the wings

    the wings catch

    and we are falling

    at the speed of

    thinking of working

    with wood to build

    a craft artless and floating

    two wheels spare

    draft and graft

    o hope o love

    ah this quenching

    thru to a new

    name spoken by

    wind on

    the underside

    of a leaf falling

    into the river

    cleaner going

    go on feel

    each finger

    one root

    pulling

    green clear

Music Composition

Production Support

Costume design: Citlali Urquiza

Stage management: Alyson McMurray, Olivia Kearns

Lighting support: Caden Schaefer

This performance has been made possible with the following support

  • Sustainability Teaching, Application and Research Grant, from the Sustainability Practices and Research Center

  • School of Performing Arts Outreach

  • Research, Scholarship, and Professional Growth

  • Hemingway Teaching Excellence Grant (Lindquist College of Arts & Humanities)

  • RAMP EZ Grant

  • Shaw Gallery

  • Stewart Education Fund