Ecosophy

ECOSOPHY
Clients: AHA Dance and Thursday Trio

An interdisciplinary collaboration of dance, visual arts and music.

Print, installation art and photography.

ECOSOPHY: Making Marks with Music, Dance and Visual Arts

Our project is an interdisciplinary collaboration of dance, visual arts and music with the Aha dance collective, Thursday trio and multi-modal artist Gala Hesson. The project explores the awe and vulnerability of our natural environments, cyclic underpinnings, the at-ness of improvisation. There is an emphasis on process – ecology in action, creation of a language to translate the mystery and magic of the human/nature connection. Ecology as community – interdependent landscapes. Bright futures.

Ecosophy is a combination of improvisation and developed work, and will comprise of four phases:

Dawn
· Dawn Chorus.
· Awakening, Opening, Anew, Rebirth, Light absorption.
· Interconnection between bodies, music, and installation.
The performers’ and artists’ responses to each other in the moment.

Midday
· Chloroplasts moving on periphery of the cell, protection from midday sun.
· Light reaction of photosynthesis vs dark reaction of photosynthesis.
· Earth warming, seed-pods popping, intense light dependent chemical reactions
· Exploding smells.

Dusk
· Cyclic underpinnings – reversal of the dawn sequence.
· Cooling down of the earth.
· Dusk chorus – lingering, twilight.

Midnight
· Breath, stillness, rest, slow rhythms, surreal, mystery.
· Decay, decomposition: the process by which organic substances are broken down into simpler forms
of matter. The process is essential for recycling the finite matter that occupies physical space in the
biome (aka ecosystem).

Leading up to the performance dates artists’ will develop their own components and response to the thematic concepts described above. We will come together approximately three times for group rehearsals to discover the connections and contradictions in our explorations, and begin weave our work together. We will hire the Glue Gallery hall from the 3rd to the 16th December so that we have a week to bring together the visual art work and create the performance environment. The performance environment will be exhibited during Glue Gallery opening hours, free for the public to view the artist’s work outside of the performance. The technical and dress rehearsals will be held between Monday 10th and Wednesday 12th, with the performance and exhibition running from Thursday 13th and Saturday 15th.

The Ecosophy project will be of benefit to the community as we aim to raise awareness of individual agency within the ecosystems in which we live. We wish to promote the idea that we coexist with our natural surroundings as an interdependent network. In addition, we aim to create inclusivity by keeping the cost of the performance as low as possible. A longer term goal of the project is to devise lesson plans for primary and secondary schools based on the themes explored within Ecosophy, and that include dance, visual arts and music. The objective of the lesson plans is to explore environmental themes, such as eco-systems, through an interdisciplinary arts approach.

Participants:
Gala Hesson – visual artist, designer
Hahna Briggs – dancer, choreographer
Hannah Rouse – dancer, choreographer, visual artist
Matthew Sanson – musician
Stuart Porter – musician
Susan Ellis – musician

Number of performances:
Three

Location of performance(s)
Glue gallery Hall, 26 Stafford Street, Dunedin

Date(s) of Exhibition and performance(s):
Performances: Thursday 13th, Friday 14th, and Saturday 15th December 2012, 8.30pm – 9.30pm
Exhibition: Thursday 13th and Friday 14th, 12pm – 6pm. Saturday 15th, 12pm – 4pm