A group of dancers balance buckets of dark liquid on their heads in Times Square. "We can't use real oil here because it's completely hazardous and disastrous," Josephine Decker, the creator of the performance piece, says. "It makes you realize what a huge mess it is in the Gulf."

The group uses a mixture of water and food coloring to represent oil.

Tourists watch as Ariana Disman, 21, fills up her oil can. Disman came from Toronto to participate in the performance. While she's balancing, she says she repeats the phrase "may you be well" to the audience in her head.

Jesse Phillips-Fein, 30, takes off her long-sleeved shirt while keeping her balance. "You have to listen deeply to your body, your spine," she says.

Eventually, the oil spills, as Reina Potaznik, 25, knows.

Since the mixture the group uses is mostly water, it doesn't show up on the performers clothes dramatically when it spills. "We're still trying to get the mixture right," Decker, who's worried about stinging the perfromers eyes, says. "We're thinking about incorporating molasses."

Alyse Orcutt, 8 (left) and her sister Kailina, 5, stop to watch the balancing act on their way to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. "A lot of oil spilled into the water," Alyse says. "It made it so the birds' feathers were covered in oil and they couldn't fly."

Decker, being interviewed, hopes her performance piece will get people talking.

"We are constantly in this process of balancing oil," Decker says. "We have this reliance on it and we can't escape from under it...whether we like it or not it's going to continue to spill."