Trees

I see one dancer moving and swaying like a tree, looking into the sky or the upper branches of the tree (from Pete's notes, day 2, Oct 1)

The dance students are gathered on a flat area next to where the grove slopes up to the South, East and West. They begin warming up and organize themselves into not-quite-uniform rows. Michele leads them and as I look their arms are pointing straight up. There will be no warm ups on the ground today, as the dancers would get muddy (Chris's notes, 9/29/8).

Grove ambient 16.mp3 A dancer jumped at tree, slid down, but the bottom of the tree caught her back, then she looked up at the tree and said it was a really beautiful experience

Grove ambient 12.mp3 Dancer commenting on how he saw the tree as a destination and would "melt into it" and he "let myself go." He describes a danger zone in the space in between trees but then got used to it and started to crawl on the ground, play with leaves, etc.

Grove ambient 11.mp3 Student dancer comment: "it's Wednesday, it's hump day, I'm tired," so she "leaned her butt up against the tree and collapsed against it," it was "so relaxing" to rest on the tree. Michelle H. says how we are perceiving the trees as a different role

Grove ambient 18.mp3 Donna Joe, talking about there was one tree that was split, so she got between them and gave all her weight to the tree and then looked up at the tree leaves, how it was beautiful, then other dancers coming to tree and hugging the tree

The class moves on to their second activity, a “journey on the tree.” Michelle asks the students to put their backs to the trees to begin and try to take up surface area on the tree. Students roll up and down and around the trees, slowly. Their movements are constrained and influence by the size of the tree, the placement of the roots, bugs. Is it possible for you work your way around two different trees in the same way? As they debrief, Michelle (?) comments that this activity forces you to “focus on a very intimate space in this expansive space” which is a great way of describing this. The dancers have hardly moved at all, maybe a few feet around the same tree where they began. Each has a very small space to work with. (Michelle's notes, 9/29)