One reporter remarked that it seemed very German, and was probably the result of a lack of things to do at this conference. Yet one got the impression by the description of the dances that they might perform some service of highlighting, through movement, the prevailing problems such as poverty and gender issues in the acquisition of freshwater.

Sounds of flushing and running water echoed suddenly throughout the room, and one had to wonder if perhaps someone had inserted a microphone in a WC stall and connected it to a vital speaker by some egregious error. It was not until three scantily-clad women appeared from nowhere and began to dance through rows of delegates that it became apparent this was part of the performance we had been promised, entitled "Water in Everyday Life."

The three women wore tiny, tight black tops and black or turquoise shorts with thong-like undergarments which were visible each time they bent over. They began by waving their arms in grand sweeping motions and flipping their bright heads of hair around in circles. One woman clutched her heart and proceeded to fall to the ground, rolling over many times from side to side. Another made rain gestures with her fingers, while the third walked in circles across the center of the room, her shoulders hunched and her stomach tightened, looking as though she had desperately to urinate. The other two soon followed in the same fashion.

A new rhythm of music kicked in, complete with congo drums and watery sound effects and the clash of banging metal. At this point, two men wearing black shirts and grey pants came running forward to accompany the women now hopping about the central stage, and the men seemed to take an oppressive manner toward them. They fiercely pressed the women into their arms and grabbed them violently back each time the women attempted to escape from the rigid hold of their muscle-bound companions. The dance ended with the men picking the women up into their arms and carrying them off like children.

Delegates appeared stoic during the performance and sat very still in their seats, while Jürgen Trittin could be seen smiling from his seat at the panel. "Obviously you can see the situation," observed an outspoken Uschi Eid, Parliamentary State Secretary of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, to some giggles among the crowd. "We all know the importance of water in our everyday life." Klaus Topfer, UN Under Secretary General and Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), who was introduced directly after the performance, joked that he was grateful to Trittin for not inviting him to dance with the girls, because he "would have had to decline."

One delegate commented that he loved the dancers because they were "good and very beautiful," and were "trying to show that it's a difficult thing to access water, which was obvious when walked around looking sad and laying around on the floor."

By contrast, Karel Vanek, choreographer of Cerna & Vanek Dance, which for this function included five dancers and two musicians, admitted that there was no such implication involved. The Bonn-based theatre group, he told Conference News Daily, has nothing to do with the UN and ordinarily performs very different dances.

"We were contacted by the culture center of Bonn and asked to perform for this conference," he said. The dancers, who are actually all from different companies, met together ten to twelve times over the past two months to plan and practice the dance. But if the abstract movements were not meant to symbolize poverty or limited access to water as a basic need, what was it exactly that they were hoping to portray?

"Water," Vanek replied simply. "They were supposed to look like water. The first part expressed the movement that was there always in water, and always will be. The second part showed how it's part of everyday life."

But what about the part where the men danced in to hold back their female counterparts? Was that not supposed to represent gender issues surrounding the splashy debate?

"Oh, no," Vanek declared. "Nothing about any problems. Just the eternality of water."