“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 1. Cancer Full Moon: 27th December 2023 -25th January 2024
“ 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 2
the second location scared and drew me; the shadow of a towering chestnut ring. I was afraid to step into the circle of trees, thinking I would find darkness. I was afraid of what might be in that darkness. But when I stepped inside the circle of trees, what I found was intense peace.
The best time to dance here is in bright sliver moonlight, when the shadows of the swaying branches dance on the ground.
Rooks roost in the chestnut trees. Their calling is a constant. These birds are symbols of sacred connection, with a reputation for mystic flight between past, present and future.