Julia Úlehla: Across Watery Bodies I, II, III

Over the past few years, I have engaged in a daily practice of walking in Pacific Spirit forest with my dog. I often sing as I walk. Sometimes that means singing songs I know, and sometimes it means improvising with the forest and its inhabitants. For this commission, I made a specific practice of improvising with/to/for water.

When you walk in the forest every day, you realize how much the water changes (among many other things that change). Certain times of the year it pools everywhere. Little streams run down the paths and the seasonal creeks are bursting. Some days water in the air enables you to glimpse the wondrous mystery of the trees breathing, as when rain gives way to sudden sunlight. As it gets drier, and then rains for a few days, you realize how long it takes for the water to actually start pooling again (it's slower than you might think). You notice that your companion, a dog, has certain places he likes to visit so that he can drink--reliable water sources, where the water is clearer, cleaner, abundant--but that these dry up earlier or later some years. Water generates so many different sounds, depending on its movement and its interactions with itself and others.

These three compositions arise from my practice of singing with water in the forest. I recently came across a new-to-me term, "hydrofeminism," from Astrida Neimani's 2018 book "Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water." I like to think of my practice of singing with water as a hydrofeminist practice. For my ancestors, water was sacred. It plays a role in many of the ancestral folk songs I know. 60-70% of the human body is water. Approximately 71% of the earth's body is water. Human lungs are one of our wateriest parts, comprised of 83% water. In our earliest experiences, we float in our mother's watery bellies. These three compositions are love songs to the water within us, and the water without. To fluidity, change, movement, sloshing, rippling, evaporating, transforming, sustaining life.

About the artist

Julia Úlehla is an interarts performer, composer, scholar, and cultural worker who lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people. Her performance practice and research engage with "living song" and other forms of more-than-human life, ancestry, traditional culture, and forms of experimentation. She received a BA in Music from Stanford University, an MMus in Vocal Performance from the Eastman School of Music, a PhD in Ethnomusicology from UBC, and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cultural Studies at Queens University. Julia was a member of the laboratory theatre the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, and now regularly performs throughout North America and Europe with her ensemble Dálava, and in a variety of other performance milieus. Her scholarship has appeared in the journals Performance Matters (2023) and Ethnomusicology Translations (2018), and as a co-authored chapter in Research and Reconciliation: Unsettling Ways of Knowing through Indigenous Relationships (2019). As a composer and vocalist, she has recorded on Pi Recordings (2025), Songlines Recordings (2017), and Sanasar Records (2014).