Sensing with Trees (2020-23)

Eco-Somatic Group Dance Practice

Videographic Embodied Research

NATURECULTURE Pedagogical Interventions

This emergent assemblage of dance-led eco-somatic research, performative and pedagogical practices and processes aim to displace the assumed separation between human and arboreal life to embrace the possibility of relating with trees as intimate companions of movement and becoming.

Sensing with trees is engaged as an improvisational and phenomenological earth-body practice through which the felt sense of movement meets and is met by the experience of something being seen and languaged in the light (and shadow) of the more-than-human. The embodied exchange with oneself, with places and other humans reveal that an intimate encounter with trees cannot be constructed. We can work on slow processes of listening and attunement by opening our senses and imagination to arboreal livingness and responsiveness. The embodied encounter between human and tree is evoked as a dance which decentres human agency and allows us to be reached and changed kinaesthetically by the carnal presence of trees. Reciprocity emerges as the awareness of a deep ecological shift of perception: we are not only sensing and witnessing trees; we are also being sensed and witnessed by them.

Language - as the articulation of the internal adventure of movement through words and audiovisuality - is explored as a medium for dwelling on the somatic threshold of the more-than-human and for sharing the experience with others. This works by exposing our vulnerability and by tracing the movement of attention between the inside and the outside. When we recognise and value the profound need to dance underpinning our return to nature we discover that trees are more wounded than we are and that they are not there only to heal us. They are there also to find out about our history of separation and alienation and to receive our healing.

To know more about the collective practices of ‘Sensing with Trees’:

Eco-somatic group dance practice

Pedagogical performative interventions

SOLO PRACTICE: VIDEOGRAPHIC EMBODIED RESEARCH

BECOMING WITh-NESS

October 2020-October 2021

Short video essay

Lying under the tree is a mode of embodiment where human perception is met by a radically different way of sensing and responding. To stay here is to become a witness: of my heart, of my breath, of this earth, of this tree. To stay here is to be witnessed: by layers of broken branches, pieces of bark, bits of leaves of different kinds and colors, pebbles, worms and insects, moisture, and dried matter.

BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY

October 2020-October 2021

Short video essay

Like trees, human bodies are the meeting point between earth and sky. As the trunk pulls upward, the roots are pulling downward. As the roots pull downward, the trunk is pulling upward. This constant tension between different forces defines the movement of becoming. Grounding is growing creatively out of the constraints that define our sensibility and our sentience. Trees are masters of grounding. To learn this art, we need to awaken our senses and our imagination to the possibility of a more-than-human perceptual interchange.

haptic RECIPROCITY

October 2020-October 2021

Short video essay

When you sit, lie, or stand on a branch, your movement depends on the presence of the tree. You can feel how the tree is demanding something of you. The tree demands your sensitivity to its structure and to its shapes. It demands your responsiveness to its breath and to its touch. It demands that you listen to its height and width, to its softness and firmness, to its individuality and its participation in the larger ecosystem. The more you accept these demands, the more you can have an intimate sense of your body and of your movement as part of something larger than your individual self.