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