Episode 27: Art and Creativity Inspired by the Indian River Lagoon

Heather Stapleton:

What happens when creativity and conservation meet under the spotlight?

When the curtains rise, instead of a distant fairy tale, the story unfolding is one in our own backyard, a world of dolphin, giant land crabs, and magical mangroves brought to life in pirouettes. Music swells for the creatures of the Indian River Lagoon.

In another auditorium, the room dims again. A quartet begins, a narrator steps forward. And suddenly, the lagoon is speaking through history, through rhythm, through the voices of students who have studied its past and are now composing its future.

In both examples, no slideshows, no graphs, just story and sound and soul, because sometimes the best way to teach is to enchant. And sometimes the deepest truths don’t come from the podium, but from a stage.

Today on One Lagoon, One Voice, how the Indian River Lagoon inspires creativity and how that creativity reaches new audiences in new ways.

Duane DeFreese:

Hi, I am Duane De Freese, executive director of the IRL Council and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program. Welcome to our One Lagoon, One Voice Podcast.

Each week, myself or one of my staff members will host leaders in the community, scientists along the lagoon, people who know a lot about the system to talk about some of the problems.
And most importantly, some of the solutions to solve the Indian River Lagoon’s health and make sure it’s great for future generations.

So let’s get the show started and let’s talk a little lagoon.

Heather:

Welcome back to One Lagoon, One Voice, the podcast of the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program, where we explore the people, ideas and efforts that help protect and celebrate this unique and vital estuary.

I’m Heather Stapleton, one of three community engagement coordinators for the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program. I personally love the performing arts and live creative endeavors. I enjoy considering how performances might help new audiences fall in love with the Indian River Lagoon, especially those who might not even attend a lecture or read a report.

Today, we’re stepping away from the labs and the restoration sites and diving into a different kind of connection with the Indian River Lagoon through music, dance, and live performance. With me are two incredible guests who are doing just that.

Adam Schnell, artistic director and choreographer behind Vero Beach Ballet’s Nutcracker on the Indian River, a whimsical take on the holiday classic that kind of trades the traditional, iconic series of the character dancers from around the world to iconic animals from around the Indian River Lagoon.

Adam, thank you so much for being here.

Adam Schnell:

Thanks for having me, Heather. I’m excited.

Heather:

I am too.

And Daniel Flick, senior lecturer at Rollins College and creative mentor for the Indian River Lagoon Estuary in Concert, a powerful student-composed multimedia performance that brings the human and natural history of the lagoon to life.

Daniel, thank you too.

Daniel Flick:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s truly an honor.

Heather:

Well, Adam and Dan, I have to tell you, I’m kind of fangirling out because both of your performances were so impactful to me. I’ve actually cried a little bit during both of them because they’re so unexpected and so magical. So I just wanna kind of get started with this big idea.

Something special happens when you use art to tell a story, especially an environmental one. No facts, no figures, just feelings. And I’ve seen the Nutcracker on the Indian River multiple times now, and I absolutely love act two. And even during the height of COVID, you still made it work.

So question for Adam, the magic of ballet allows imagination to take over. And when that imagination includes manatees and mangroves, suddenly the lagoon feels personal. When you think about reaching people through your performance, what do you think it unlocks that maybe a scientific report or a talk just can’t unlock for people?

Adam:

You know, that’s really interesting. I think that you sort of hit the nail on the head, Heather, when you said it becomes personal. Everything at Ballet Vero Beach is personal to us. We used to use the hashtag on social media #InspiredByOurSurroundings because there was no professional ballet company in the area before Ballet Vero Beach. We don’t have a professional dance history here.

So I knew that when I founded the company, and as we’ve brought sort of people into the fold, that we really were in a bit of a tight spot.

We had to satisfy folks that, you know, wealthy snowbirds that could fly to see ballet wherever they wanted, whether, you know, “Oh, I wanna see the production in London this year, and I’m just gonna go because I can.”

And we also had to satisfy new audiences that maybe it was their first experience with ballet. And when it came to thinking about a Nutcracker project for our organization, I just couldn’t help but look to our own backyard.

I grew up in the woods in Northwestern Vermont. I have always been someone who loves to be outdoors, who feels at home in nature. And why couldn’t the Spanish dance from Act 2 become the clacking claws of a land crab, right?

Heather:

I know. I love it. I love it.

Adam:

I started to do research. I’m like, I can’t believe no one’s done this before. But in particular, we had a great relationship with the Indian River Land Trust at the time we were putting the production together.

We just wanted to take arts lovers and have them become environmentalists and have environmentalists become arts lovers, because performing arts are about showing. It’s not about telling. And I feel like especially in this day and age, people don’t wanna be told. I think that’s a terrible thing. I think there’s a lot of things that we should be told and we should be doing (laughs).

Heather:

That’s a great point. Yeah.

Adam:

People don’t wanna be told. They want to be shown and they want to come to the conclusion of their own devices.

Heather:

Yeah.

Adam:

So if I could change Nutcracker in a way that made people go, “Huh, maybe I shouldn’t use fertilizer on my lawn. Maybe I should make sure I’m recycling. Maybe I should donate to an environmental charity to keep this beautiful ecosystem that we have right here that doesn’t exist anywhere else around for generations to come.”

So that was the crux of it at the beginning.

Heather:

I love that. I think it’s really important. And, you know, people do love to be entertained. If their information can also be entertaining, even better.

Adam:

Yeah, absolutely.

Heather:

And Dan, I recently saw the Indian River Estuary In Concert, and your students… they weren’t just performing, they were really processing what the lagoon means to them.

Its history, its fragility, its place in the overall story of Florida. That emotional investment was really contagious. The audience could feel it. And I’m really curious as how you help your students tap into that emotional connection and kind of what’s your creative process.

Daniel:

That’s such a great question. And I was asking myself that because I have students from California and from other parts of the world.

And for me personally, I grew up in the Indian River Lagoon, and I worked there as a fishing guide right outta high school at a fish camp that no longer exists called Cedar Creek Fish Camp. And I had this personal, just love of the area before there was GPS and very few people were in the lagoon, especially in a hard to get to places because there was no map. And you might end up spending an extra night that you weren’t planning on just trying to find your way home.

Heather:

(laughs).

Daniel:

So, I figured how can I really bring these students into it?

And as luck would have it, or good fortune, my brother is the Marine Operations Director at Marine Discovery Center. And I talked to him, I said, “What about that pontoon boat? Can I bring the kids over?” And he worked it out so that we basically, we took a college bus over, and we got to go on this amazing tour with Greg Holbrook from the History Museum there in New Smyrna and scientists from the Marine Discovery Center. And we got the students out there, feet wet, hands on, and really gave them the opportunity to see what it was they were writing.

And at this point in the process, they had already done a lot of research. We had had guest lectures in, so they had all of this information, but no way to put it geographically and just like, how close to home it was.

We go over there, it was 45 minutes, you know?

Heather:

Yeah.

Daniel:

And they always drive towards Disney, and we are driving out towards the St. John’s River Basin.

And they’re like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know there were cows here in Florida.

Heather:

(Laughs) It’s so close. Yeah.

Daniel:

So yeah. So we just had the great fortune of getting to take ’em out and getting their feet wet.

Heather:

Yeah. Dan, why do you think that performance is able to invite so much empathy in the audience?

From my point of view, I saw it at the Shore Symposium up in New Smyrna Beach, and you had an amazing audience of scientists and educators and folks who already knew a lot about the lagoon. And for me, that audience, I think they felt proud to see the information that they knew represented in a different kind of way. But I know that’s not the only time that the students have done the performance.

Daniel:

I can kind of answer that partly in a little anecdote. When I was first writing the show and we had the script and we were getting close to like, saying, “Okay, we’re ready to go”, and we rehearsed all the way through it.

So there would be like a writing session and a rehearsal and a writing and a rehearsal. But when we were really ready to start to run the whole thing, even start to finish and get a feel for the show flow, I brought in a close friend of mine that’s just an amazing musician and creator writer who’s written many, many shows, just wonderful performer, and we had an audience of one. And I really wanted him to do a fine tooth comb, like, exactly, what do you hear? What do you think? And we performed it for, just for him. And at the end he looks at the students and me, and he says, “Who’s your audience?”

He says, “If it happens to be a whole bunch of scientists, this is great.” He says, “You wrote a really smart show. Do you think that you could in some way kind of pare it down a little for more of a general audience?” And we discussed that as a class in the writing. And the answer at the end was no.

We wrote this at a college level, and we wrote it according to the history and the science-

Heather:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Daniel:

…that we were writing, and we really wanna keep it where it is. So, it’s a great question because the first time that we performed it for an audience, we were a little bit waiting for that response.

And we were all just thrilled that the audience, they were right there with us.

Heather:

Yeah. It was, both performances, just so great. And, you know, you’re both working in very different art forms, classical ballet on one hand, or even modern ballet on one hand, and original contemporary music and storytelling on the other. But in these two performances, there is a clear thread. The performances really are rooted in place in our Indian River Lagoon.

Adam, you redesigned the entire second act with bespoke costumes and unexpected backdrops and brand new choreography to honor the animals of the lagoon. And it is playful, but seems very intentional at the same time. So my question is kind of how and why did you begin to shape this work so that it could really explore the local identity of the lagoon?

Adam:

So a lot of people don’t realize that the Nutcracker as a ballet is almost an immigrant, right? It premiered in the 1800s in Russia. It was a critical flop. It wasn’t till it made its way to San Francisco Ballet in America, and then New York City Ballet in the early part of the 20th century that it gained popular footing and became sort of part of everybody’s holiday season.

Heather:

Right.

Adam:

And since then, there is a history of local productions taking local history and weaving it into a production.

I, myself, in Omaha, Nebraska of all places, was part of what was called the Orpheum Nutcracker, which was a spectacular production set in the 1920s. Actually, the opening night of the Orpheum Theater in Omaha, Charlie Chaplin is a guest at the party. All of the second act dances look like movies from the era. There’s a whole Rudolph Valentino parody of the Sheik. Like, so I had, throughout my professional career, I had seen choreographers really tweak the production.

Heather:

Okay.

Adam:

And I have such a love for that ballet. It just inspires such feelings of home, and like you said, pride of place, a sense of place, that I really knew I didn’t want to go the classic, you know, parlor in the 1800s in Nuremberg or however you wanted to see it.

And really, it did start with the animals that I saw around living in Vero Beach. It really did, like I, as we were talking about the land crabs, which I’ve mentioned are the sort of take the place of the second act Spanish dance, I think I had come back home after a hurricane or a near miss with a hurricane. And you know how there are like hundreds of land crabs?

Heather:

Yes. (laughs).

Adam:

Like around, like they’ve all been pushed outta their homes. I was like, huh. And then I looked at the manatees, I go, huh, look at them through the little mangrove, like going through the man-… I’m like, okay, so let me sit down and let me see, is this possible? So it started with all kinds of flora and fauna in the second act. And then I went, okay, that’s great, but what are we gonna do for the first act, right? Does our young heroine, some productions call her Clara. We call her Marie. How does she get there?

Heather:

Right.

Adam:

How do we still have a snow scene, right? Like, there’s so many things that I’m like… and I,as choreographer, I love problems, right? Not actual problems like in the theater when something doesn’t work, but I love the choreographic problem of how are we gonna get there with the story?

And so after I had sort of stumbled upon all of the flora and fauna, and really, they were all animal characters and you know, bougainvillea and things like that, that I see every day, or maybe not, I don’t see a bobcat every day, but things like that.

I went back to Act 1 and I said, “Okay, first of all, when is this set?” Vero Beach was about to celebrate our centennial. And I was like, okay, so it’s set in 1919.

What was going on in 1919 in Vero? Well, people were land prospecting for the citrus industry. Oh, Waldo Sexton was around. Oh. So I sat down with the Sexton family. I said, “So what if the crazy uncle, it’s not Waldo, but what if it was a little bit Waldo?” And they went, “We think that’s great.”

So all of a sudden-

Heather:

Yes. I bet they did (laughs).

Adam:

Right. So all of a sudden then I’m like, okay, so he’s here. Where is the little girl? And, you know, the Florida East Coast Railway was such a huge thing. I’m like, what, Grand Central Station, New York City. Like, everybody wants to be in New York at Christmas time.

So all of a sudden we had this narrative, and I was like, I think this can actually work. Right? And from there, it was just getting the right designers and sitting with the material and thinking about the choreography in such a way, you know, that paid homage to not only the human characters, but the animal characters and really still told that story.

Because in my opinion, the reason Nutcracker is so popular is because of that Wizard of Oz ending, right?

Heather:

Mm-hmm.

Adam:

Was the young girl asleep the whole time? Was it all a dream? And to be able to have it performed in a place where people can literally step outside and the lagoon is blocks away, all of a sudden, I mean, that’s just like, whoa, mind blown.

Like even if it was this little girl’s dream, we have this place and I can see these animals like right now if I want to. So I think that it all just came together in a really beautiful way that, art and creativity, like, it doesn’t always happen, but when it does, you just go, yeah, this is gonna work. We’re gonna be fine.

Heather:

It definitely works. It’s very magical. I don’t think enough people know about it, and so that’s why I’m particularly excited that you’re here today. Maybe we can help boost some future audiences.

Adam:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Heather:

And Dan, kind of the same question, or a similar question for you. Your students really seem to dig into the indigenous histories of the lagoon, the colonial period, the environmental changes over time. Some parts of it were instrumental. Others had spoken word or, even more dramatized moments, like the voice of the lagoon itself. It was both educational and poetic.

How did your students shape this around the local identity of the lagoon, beyond just going on that pontoon trip?

Daniel:

I started them with kind of a skeleton of the timeline. I said, “We have to find out basically when the lagoon was created geologically, what that history is, and then we need to personify the lagoon.”

And so frequently in history and in mythologies, you know, the rivers are women. So we wanted her to tell her story. And that whole opening sequence with the video pieces and all, I said, we know where we’re going because there’s some tragic things that have happened-

Heather:

Mm-hmm. That’s true.

Daniel:

…and are continuing to happen to this lagoon.

And we know where we’re headed. So what we have to make sure we do in the very beginning is celebrate the beauty and the natural elements that we’re trying to preserve and bring awareness to.

So we kind of, that whole opening sequence about the water falls away talks about the historic water basically receding and creating this estuary, but we tell it with a video backdrop that shows what’s in there without actually saying it. So that’s happening simultaneously to the opening of it.

Heather:

And that’s really the magic, it’s education without feeling like a lecture, and it still lands.

And Dan, I was wondering, you know, I’m gonna have a similar question for both of you, but Dan, do you remember any audience reactions that really stayed with you?

Daniel:

Absolutely. When you do a classical type performance as opposed to a bar or a rock concert, in a bar, you hear hooting and hollering. In a rock concert, people are dancing and stuff.

So when you’re in a classical situation, you can feel that audience. I mean, they’re there. And if they’re really, really with you, there’s very little activity. You know, people aren’t crinkling a candy wrapper, and they’re not looking at the program or checking their phones. And at the end of the first performance of this, you know, and it’s an hour straight through, like you said, with the history, and, at the end of it, there was just this collective exhale. Like, people were kind of a little bit holding their breath, like, what’s next? What’s next?

And one person in the audience said something to the effect of like, “Oh, my.” It just kind of popped through that beat before the applause.

Heather:

Mm-hmm.

Daniel:

So yeah, it’s like, oh, we got ’em. We reached ’em.

And it just like… if an audience is really, really enthralled with something, they don’t necessarily react immediately.

Heather:

Right.

Daniel:

If you really touched them, there’s a beat.

Heather:

Yeah.

Daniel:

And in the first performance, it was that beat that just said everything. It’s like, oh, yeah. Yeah. They came with us.

Heather:

And Adam, same question for you. Do you remember any audience reactions that really have just stayed with you? You’ve been doing your performance longer and you’ve had more performance opportunity.

Adam:

So I guess two audience reactions really stick with me. The very, very first performance, we’ve been doing Nutcracker on the Indian River pretty much annually since 2017. The very first performance at the end of act one when the show curtain came down on the snow scene and the audience erupted, I was like, oh, well, we got ’em, because the-

Heather:

(laughs).

Adam:

…next act is dancing manatees. Like, we ain’t gonna mess it up from here. This is no problem. So I, you know, I exhaled because honestly, every once in a while I do something like really naive and really stupid. And this production, trying to put this together at first was that.

Ballet Vero Beach was not big enough for a production with 30 professional dancers and 50 kids, and sets and special effects. And it almost killed me. And it’s gotten better. It doesn’t kill me as much anymore, but…

Heather:

(laughs).

Adam:

So that very first opening night at the end of Act 1, I’m like, oh, we got ’em. This is fine. Everything’s gonna be fine.

And then I think it was the following season, we introduced what’s called Nutcracker For All, and that is our accessible and family-friendly version of the show. So mostly geared towards folks with differing mental abilities, maybe kids on the autism spectrum, maybe some physical differences.

We don’t turn the lights all the way down. The soundtrack is lowered. And we did that Nutcracker For All before we ever had an accessible family-friendly series.

So the very first Nutcracker For All performances, we’d done all the research, right? What are the modifications that need to happen? How can we welcome folks that don’t necessarily feel welcome in a proscenium theater into the theater? We did everything. We were prepared for, you know, people moving around, people yelling things out at the performers. We had trained the dancers.

Heather:

Yeah.

Adam:

When I tell you, Heather, that it was silent for the entire hour and the most enthralled and wrapped from the youngest child to, you know, the oldest member of the audience, that was really special. Because oftentimes as artists, we’re told that our art is not for certain audiences.

Heather:

Mm-hmm.

Adam:

And at Ballet Vero Beach, I just don’t believe that. I believe everyone can come into a theater or a concert hall or a museum and take something away. It might not be the, you know, the full scientific impact of something, but they are taking something away that is going to affect the rest of their lives.

So that audience, that first Nutcracker For All, when it was just silent and it ended and everyone started applauding, I said, “Okay, we need to keep doing this. We need to figure out how we can do this with our other productions.” Because if no one sees, and no one sees in a way that is meaningful for them at an entry point that they’re comfortable with-

Heather:

Mm-hmm.

Adam:

…what’s the point? Why are we doing it?

Heather:

Yeah. That is the perfect segue, because it’s really that impact that creates those ripples and hopefully goes on to something even beyond that first touch that you have with your audiences, and you’re really building this cultural memory around the lagoon and helping it jump out of textbooks or field guides, and really be in folks imaginations, you know, beyond just the factual information.

So Dan, I’m wondering if you have any advice that you might be able to give to other environmental programs looking to partner with artists or storytellers or, you know, different ways that perhaps the scientific community can communicate through story.

Daniel:

Well, you know, I just would kind of bring up the point that music and the arts is almost never about music and the arts.

Heather:

Good point.

Daniel:

It’s always about something else.

Heather:

Right?

Daniel:

There’s always some, you know, concern from the artist. You look at the whole romantic period in classical music. They were starting to really, this was the beginning of the industrial revolution and they’re starting then to say like, “Oh, my, look what we’re doing to our environment.”

Now things have progressed, and when I use progress, I don’t mean in a positive way necessarily. Everybody’s always like, “Oh, we’re making progress.” It’s very possible to progress to a much worse state of affairs.

It’s just a sequence of events, you know? So don’t tell me we’re making progress, and it’s supposed to be good. So my point being that, absolutely bring the arts into all kinds of scientific concerns because they’re already there.

You look at Joni Mitchell and the Humpback Whale songs that I think everybody got in their National Geographic and the little vinyl album in the seventies. And, Marvin Gaye with Mercy Mercy Me. You know, everybody’s on the dance floor, but listen to the words of that, you know?

Heather:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Daniel:

It’s tragic what he’s saying and like pretty much everything John Denver ever wrote was dedicated to some environmental cause. It really was his mission to bring awareness to all these things.

And if I could also just say, Adam, I looked up the Nutcracker on the Indian River Lagoon (laughs), because I realized we were gonna get to meet in this. It’s brilliant. It’s-

Adam:

Thank you.

Daniel:

…absolutely brilliant. And you know, obviously the things that you’ve stated, but the point that, the part that you are bringing that in during the holiday season.

Adam:

Right.

Daniel:

You know? It’s a time where people are just so blurred and so busy, and it’s like, well, wait a minute. This estuary is here 24/7, during the holidays too.

Adam:

Yeah. There’s no holiday break for the Indian River Lagoon (laughs).

Daniel:

Yeah. It is just brilliant. I can hardly wait to see it.

Adam:

Awesome.

Heather:

And speaking of the holiday season, the Nutcracker is for many people a staple of the holiday season, and for many children, it might be their very first exposure to ballet ever. So I really appreciate the family-friendly and the performances for all. What other partnerships have you created to ensure that local youth are included, Adam?

Adam:

I think that that has really been one of the most exciting things about Ballet Vero Beach is coming from the perspective of we are gonna build a ballet company, right? We’re gonna have an arts organization and hopefully it becomes an institution, and really at some point going, that’s great, but what does the community want from us? And what does the community need from us?

And really, don’t get me wrong, I’m super proud of Nutcracker on the Indian River (laughs). It came out. People love it. I’m very proud of that. But some of the stuff that I’m most proud of is really just how we include different facets of the community in the arts, and then we kind of put ourselves in the center of important conversations on how to move the community forward, hopefully positive progress.

Heather:

Mm-hmm.

Adam:

That could be an environmental slant, or it could be the fact that I didn’t want all of the children’s roles in Nutcracker on the Indian River to solely go to kids who were taking dance.

Heather:

Mm-hmm.

Adam:

We have always worked with our community engagement partners, whether it’s the school district of Indian River County, we’ve worked with Boys and Girls Club before. We’re currently working with a phenomenal organization called Gifford Youth Achievement Center, where we rehearse kids that may have never been on stage before in roles in the production, and then they get to appear on stage as performers with our professionals.

It’s not a segmented thing, right? There’s not this scene where we all cross our fingers-

Heather:

(laughs).

Adam:

…and go, “Gosh, I hope the kids do what they’re supposed to do.” No, they’re out there with our professionals. And I think that you know, you asked the question earlier about how do, what could environmental organizations, what could science organizations do to integrate the arts? But I think it’s just that, I think it’s really relying on arts integration.

That could be at an academic level in terms of elementary school or with community partners, but there’s something about when difficult topics are illuminated through music or painting or ballet or theater that makes them almost more palatable. And we can sort of take a little step back and think about it and think about how we want to approach it. How can we help?

Heather:

Right.

Adam:

Right? I was talking about having kids that may have never danced before. It’s not just putting them on stage. It’s, we’ve actually taken them out on the lagoon on field days with the Indian River Land Trust. Some kids that come to us might live two miles from the lagoon, but may have never seen the lagoon.

Heather:

Yeah.

Adam:

And I just don’t understand how in this day and age, that is something that we are continuing to allow to happen.

So I feel like it is my responsibility as an artist to find these pockets and these issues where we can, in a joyous way, illuminate something that is a part of all of our lives.

If we ruin the lagoon, we ruin our lives. Like, it’s really that simple, you guys (laughs). This is not complicated.

Heather:

Right.

Adam:

So, you know, it’s something that has really been one of my proudest things at Ballet Vero Beach, is being able to sort of take this art form that I love so much, and place it in the center of the community, whether that’s, you know, a socioeconomic thing, an environmental thing, an education thing, and really use the art to hopefully inspire some good.

Heather:

Mm-hmm. We’ve been talking a lot throughout our conversation already about how artists love to work with meaningful content. And environmental content is always meaningful, I mean, and always will be meaningful. And locally, the current state of the Indian River Lagoon is certainly a very popular topic.

So maybe for both of you, we’ll start with Adam. Can you comment on the value of creativity and public engagement strategies?

Adam:

Oh, gosh. I mean, I don’t think it can be overstated. I think that to get people to care about something is to either have them have a hand in creating a solution or creating a plan, or to simply show them the problem in a way that they might not have thought of before.

And that’s the very baseline of what an artist does, right? Whether it’s Dan giving life to the lagoon through music and spoken word or Ballet Vero Beach doing it through ballet, you are experiencing something that you might… I mean, you might drive down A1A every day and never really think about it.

Heather:

Mm-hmm.

Adam:

And then you go to one of these things, you go, “Hey, wait a minute. Yeah, I’ve taken this for granted, but it’s right here.”

Heather:

Mm-hmm.

Adam:

I don’t think you can overstate the value of creativity and use, especially artistic creativity in illuminating any issue, especially environmental ones.

Heather:

Yeah. And Dan, would you like to comment on the value of creativity and public engagement strategies?

Daniel:

Well, absolutely. I think that the understanding is appreciation. And whatever form it comes in, whether it’s a science class or the opportunity to go in one of the summer camps that are up and down the lagoon now, and get an appreciation and an understanding for the estuary, it’s gonna create a love that will last a lifetime.

And an appreciation that I’m seeing more and more within my life… is you used to ask people where they’re from… nobody said Florida unless they were two or three, you know?

Heather:

(laughs).

Daniel:

And now more and more, we have an educated audience that’s born here and values it. It’s like, where are you from? Well, I’m from Florida.

And because of a lot of these arts programs and arts integration to celebrate these kinds of things, and also the summer camps that are up and down the river, we’re creating a generation that might value it enough to really step in it to save it.

Heather:

Yeah.

Adam:

Can I interject one more thing?

Heather:

Of course. Yes.

Adam:

Like, you were specifically asking, Heather, about creativity and public engagement. And I think that for me, what is amazing is these productions, having arts linked to these issues, it becomes inspiring to the everyday citizen in terms of the fact that you start to think that you can, right? You start to think that you can make a difference.

In this day and age, we’re all wondering, “Oh, well, that regulation got rolled back, that law got passed. There’s nothing I can do.” Well, there actually is, right?

I think that as artists, giving people these feelings of inspiration, of hope, of the ability to snap your fingers and something comes out of thin air, whether it’s a ballet or a musical composition, I really do believe that it inspires people to action.

And we do have a lot of power. We can go out and say, “No, this is important.” Whether it’s the most local elected official or going to Tallahassee or Washington, we do have that power as citizens of this country. And I think that that’s why if you can use that creativity to spark the public discourse in a way that is truly inspiring, right?

Heather:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam:

Like, that’s the job of an artist. Even the most difficult, tragic issue, you could leave a performance weeping, but the point is to inspire some sort of action.

Heather:

And so for me, I think really the biggest lesson here is that inspiration and appreciation and scientific learning don’t have to be separate. And the arts lets us combine all of that, ’cause I get that from both of your performances.

And before we wrap up, I think it’s very important that we let listeners know where they can go to learn more or see live or maybe see a recording of these performances.

So Adam and Daniel, thank you so much for bringing the beauty and meaning into this conversation. You’ve shown us that the lagoon isn’t just an ecosystem, it’s a stage, it’s a story, it’s a song. And so I’d really like information, Daniel, on where folks might be able to go, I don’t know if you plan any more live performances but maybe they could even see a recording of it.

Daniel:

We are hopefully both in the near future.

Heather:

Oh, good.

Daniel:

It looks like Marine Discovery Center, we’re trying to put the show on on December 4th in the Amphitheater.

Heather:

Fantastic.

Daniel:

So we’re working towards that. You know, some of the students have graduated and I’ve replaced them with other former students. And we’re really hoping that that’s gonna take place on December 4th through the Marine Discovery Center.

And folks from PBS reached out because they saw the one there at the Brannon Center and said, you know, “We’d really love for more people to know about this and a foundation that’s really geared towards helping preserve the estuary and funding specific for those.” So we’re working with those two organizations to try to do a first-class filming.

I’ve got recordings of the concert that I’m just so proud of, and I really love them, but I don’t wanna publish it if there’s a possibility that we can do this for PBS.

Heather:

And Adam, same for you. I already know your dates but where can people go to learn about your dates, where it’s gonna take place, all the pertinent info?

Adam:

So balletverobeach.org is our website. It has all the latest information.

I am happy to announce that, Nutcracker on the Indian River is actually migrating. We now have a home at the Fantastic Riverside Theater in Riverside Park in Vero Beach. So this December… December 11th through 14th, 2025 will be our run at Riverside Theater in Vero but all things Ballet Vero Beach are available at balletverobeach.org. We have a full season of performances, and we just love to have as many people know about what we’re doing as possible.

Heather:

Yeah. Thank you both so much. Adam, thanks for being here.

Adam:

Thank you so much for having me on, Heather. It was really a pleasure.

Heather:

And Dan, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.

Daniel:

Thank you so much, and thanks for sharing the message that we’re trying to promote.

Heather:

Thank you so much for listening today.

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