Listening to Water: An Interview That Moved Like a Tide

Some interviews do not unfold in straight lines. They arrive in waves. Speaking with Jalak felt like entering water slowly... First the ankles, then the knees, then the quiet surrender of the body to something larger. What emerged was not simply a conversation about choreography or the ocean, but a meditation on listening.

Water, in Jalak’s life and work, is never just a setting. It is a collaborator, a teacher and a living presence. Growing up on Turtle Island, far from the ocean, water appeared first as lakes. Later, in California, the ocean became a daily ritual. Swimming miles into cold water, Jalak learned the world beneath the surface: kelp forests swaying, fish flickering through light, the quiet power of depth, the healing embrace of the salt. The body changed. Health returned. Attention sharpened.

What stayed with me was Jalak’s devotion to listening before making. Before choreography begins, there is stillness. Jalak focuse on meditation and observation. The tide becomes a kind of score. Kelp teaches phrasing. Light teaches timing. Works like Submerged were born not from imposing movement onto space, but from allowing the environment to speak first. Fabric, mirrors, projections, and bodies moved together, creating an immersive atmosphere that echoed the feeling of being underwater.

To dance with water, Jalak reminds us, is to acknowledge its power. Water heals, but it also resists. It carries danger as much as solace. This respect runs through their practice: dancers must already know the ocean, already understand sand’s instability, already feel how waves interrupt intention. Presence is not optional here; it is a survival skill.

As the conversation flowed toward embodiment, water became a site of release. Salt softens. Resistance reshapes muscles. Movement slows and adapts. Jalak spoke of bodies as porous. The body is affected by tides, moons, animals, planetary rhythms. We are never alone in our bodies, never untouched by what surrounds us. Even the lunar calendar enters the studio, animating dancers in subtle, cyclical ways.

When we spoke about gender and fluidity, the language shifted again. Jalak described their identity as nonbinary and fluid not in fixed form but in energy and life force. Though they had not consciously framed water as a metaphor for queerness before, the resonance was undeniable. Fluidity here is not aesthetic. It is the practice of moving between states, refusing rigidity, allowing transformation. Gender, like water, resists containment.

The interview also carried grief and resistance. Jalak spoke of RimPac military exercises in Hawaiian waters. This was a portion of our discussion that cut deeply. You could feel the sorrow when they describe the practice of sonar testing, of harm inflicted on whales and dolphins, of violence that occurs out of sight, beneath the surface. In response, movement becomes protest. Filming in water, dancing in water, making installations that bear witness. These acts insist that what happens in the ocean matters, that unseen harm is still harm. It is still felt long after the destruction is over.

Perhaps the most tender moments came when Jalak described being in the water not as a return to memory, but as a return to the present. The ocean calls them into now. Small rituals, such as speaking to the water, asking for clarity, frame the ocean as a listening being, not a backdrop. Water becomes a place to ask questions without demanding answers.

This interview reminded me that insight does not always arrive as revelation. Sometimes it arrives as rhythm. As tide. As the slow shaping of thought through attention. I am deeply grateful for Jalak’s openness, for their willingness to speak from experience, and for the way their words continue to move. Their experience gave deep insight about this project. It inspired me to approach the ocean as I would another individual, with care and mutual respect.