“Between holding back and rushing through there is a way that leads, like tree roots into another place ”
Thirteen Moon Dances
Thirteen Moon Dances is an ambitious daily outdoor dance performance where the body is a portal between human and nature.
This project emerged from the question: “what is a sustainable dance performance practice for a working mum living in the countryside?”
It is inspired by the Native North American practice of a ‘sit spot’ - a person sits in the same location in nature each day, with the aim of learning from the world around them: the nature outside informing the nature inside the person.
Thirteen Moon Dances is inspired by the idea of a daily practice defined by location, but invites movement- the person inhabits and responds to place through the body.
The performance score is as follows: from one full moon to the next, the dancer performs in the same location each day for 13 minutes. The act of performance is to release the body completely from aesthetic or romantic notions of dance in landscape and instead, allow the body to move as it moves in the place that it’s in.
“being me dancing is like a bird being a bird, or a tree being a tree”
Some dance makers might call this an Improvisation. I call it becoming a portal.
At each subsequent full moon a new location is chosen and a new month of daily performances begins. The daily performance ritual lasts for a year. In total thirteen performance locations: Thirteen Moon Dances.
On one day during the month a photographer and videographer is invited to witness and record the performance.
The following footage was filmed by Hannah Anis and edited by myself. The movement content and filming was un-choreographed. The aim of the video is to convey the embodied experience of portal and place.
Portal I.
Full moon in Cancer. 27th December- 25th January
“ No longer a stranger. The place is teaching me how to listen”
“How to be alone, and at the edge of that aloneness, how to be found by the world”
Portal II
Leo full moon. 25th January-24th February
The second location scared and drew me; a towering circle of chestnut trees. I was anxious to step into their shadows, thinking I would find darkness and in that darkness something fearful. But when I walked inside the circle of trees, what I found was intense peace.
Rooks roost in these chestnuts, their calling constant. These birds are symbols of sacred connection, with a reputation for mystic flight between past, present and future.
The best time to dance here is in the early winter dark, when the frost glistens in bright silver moonlight, when the shadows of the branches dance on the ground.
Portal III
Virgo full moon. 24th February-25th March
Do you remember march? I do. It rained, every day.
The spot I chose was a Pheonix tree -a tree that has fallen but is still growing, just sideways. An oak, though I couldn’t see that in march with no leaves out.
The tree bark was covered in moss, wet from the rain, forming a slippery skin, like a fish, only smelling of mushroomy earthyness. Both sides of the tree dense, 5ft high brambles, making climbing it a bit like something out of a quest in a fairy tale….
Courage. Meeting and pushing. Gripping and climbing. Slippery as a fish. Water in the air.
Potal IV
This place became a space for grief, acceptance and maddening stillness of limbo, that framed this moment in my life.
We filmed at dawn- the time I most often danced here. You can hear the abundance of birdsong that was the soundtrack of my mornings in this special place. Hannahs 6 year old son ended up coming with her, he’s on a blanket just out of shot.
When we left, I turned to look back across the field; two deer pranced along the waters edge and stood, exactly where I had danced, looking back at me for a long moment. I have never seen deer here before or since.
In myth animals represent parts of our inner wildness speaking. The deer is a symbol of compassion.