The Water Runs Through It: Tools for Water (2025)

The Water Runs Through It: Tools for Water is a multimedia performance developed by Michelle Samour (artist and co-director) in collaboration with Souleymane “Solo” Badolo (choreographer, dancer and co-director), Abdoul Aziz Derme (dancer) and Sue Rees (animation and projection artist), which premiered at Bennington College on April 3, 2025.

The performance uses the “divining rod” or “dowsing rod”—a classically ‘Y’ shaped branch used to locate ground water and hidden minerals—as a device to address issues surrounding water/land access, ownership, and control. Drawing upon this unscientific method that is dependent upon the ‘divine’ energies of the rod-bearer (the “dowser”), the work intimates the folly and violence in making far-reaching decisions about water access and distribution. Having relied on water for their growth and formation, the divining rods that Samour created are activated by the dancers and function as tools to locate water. Rees’s projections utilize 3D scans of the rods in a projection that creates a world where both dancers and rods become seekers in search for this essential and often elusive life force.

Samour and Badolo’s work both address issues of water access and divination: Samour’s ongoing series of work about her Palestinian ancestry investigates the Israeli government’s control of water in Occupied Palestine as a tool to ethnically cleanse the land of its indigenous population; while Badolo’s work investigates indigenous divination practices in response to the water crisis in his home country of Burkina Faso, where his activism has led to the repair and construction of wells.