Dance, music, ritual and art, are so very much at the core of the human experience of everything that is beautiful in this world. At the same time, we live in a world that needs great healing, more love, more compassion, more understanding, more reasoning together on how to make societies more just, more fair, less violent, and more peaceful. We who are on this panel have each spent much of our lives engaged in the theory and practice of moving society toward more tolerance, less violence, more justice and more peace. We have each found our way to the critical importance of the mind as in need of greater integration between our senses, our experiences of the body, our emotions, and the profoundly intellectual task of building peace in a complicated world of conflict. We are convinced that every child and every adult need a better reframing of the mind around the power of music, dance, art, emotions to play a positive role in the positive thinking around ethics, social justice, human rights, healing the wounded earth, and even diplomacy and economics.

Everywhere we turn we find that the true change makers have a deep integration of the truth and beauty of the arts together with truth and beauty of compassion, kindness, care for others, right up to the tough work of environmental change, climate restoration, a vigorous shift away from destructive substances such as fossil fuels, violence reduction, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Essentially we have each established an intimate relationship between the senses and our ability to do the good, the right and the just in a world desperately in need of peace. This session will explore these interactions and the way in which all of you, each who dances on this day, are critical agents of positive change, critical ambassadors of the good and the right for a world that desperately needs more vision and more kindness.