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SEEDS Festival Somatic Experiments in Earth, Dance, & Science. 2008: Ecology Festival Schedule

photo: John Barrett

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Workshop: July 27 – August 5
The Prayer of the Butterfly
Suprapto Suryodarmo
Usually, we are in the condition that we are alone and we are just seeing nature. Through moving we can bring back parts of our self and be a part of our environment. The prayer of the butterfly, with the beauty of small and simple, yet strong, celebrates the richness of the colorful nature garden.

Since 1970, Suprapto Suryodarmo has studied free movement, Vipassana and Sumarah (Javanese meditation techniques). In 1986, Suprapto established his own school called Padepokan Lemah Putih , centered in his uniquely landscaped garden in Mojosongo, Java, Indonesia. Suryodarmo initiated a worldwide network of artists and presenting organizations; serves for Dharma Nature Time; Yayasan (Foundation) Teja Samudragiri and Yayasan Dharma Samuan Tiga (Bali). He continues to present workshops and performances in Europe, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, and recently in the U.S., Mexico and India.

Workshop: July 27 – August 1
Introduction to Permaculture,Biodynamics and Ecological Consciousness
Andrew Faust
Our own well-being is inseparable from the well-being of the earth. Come and learn ways to live that create more health and true wealth, while healing the earth and our selves. Topics include: evolution, reading the landscape, the roots of the ecological crisis, design solutions global and local. Bring questions about your garden, home and communities. Andrew Faust is a certified Permaculture designer and alternative school teacher with 15 years of experience in bioregional education and nearly 20 years in designing and working with diverse landscapes. Faust homesteaded off the grid in WV for six years, and has taught Permaculture Design at Yestermorrow in VT for the past four years. He is presently consulting and teaching in Brooklyn, NY and Philadelphia, Pa. www.homebiome.com

Workshop: August 1 - 3
Land Dreaming- Body Awakening
Zjamal Xanitha
Through movement and creative process we will explore nesting, migrating, homing and meandering to find our intrinsic connection to the patterns of nature, and the human place in the creativity of the Earth. We will ground our experiences in the mythology of land, in the inner and outer terrains of imagination and environment. 

Zjamal Xanitha is a choreographer, performer, teacher, director, and psychotherapist with over 30 years experience. Teaching internationally, in academic, professional and community settings, her work has explored movement improvisation, personal and group process, creative practice and spiritual education from a body-based, earth-honoring perspective.

Morning Workshop: August 4 - 7
Pause
Karen Nelson
Working with "pause" pokes awareness into pleasantly habitual movement. It invites a deep look under the surface of the activity. How many diverse ways can “pause” be experienced? Peeling back some layers, how does movement re-emerge from “pause?” Starting from physically engaging warm-up dances, tuning scores will take us off the map.

A slow learner, Karen Nelson has studied tuning scores with Lisa Nelson, material for the spine with Steve Paxton, contact improvisation with countless teachers-students-partners and meditation for just about 3 decades. Practice has evolved, now, to encompass all facets of building a rural retreat facility, where she aspires to sit the three-year retreat.

Afternoon Workshop: August 4 - 7
Micro macro
The BodyCartography Project
We will investigate the relationships between body systems and earth system as a way to build empathy and understanding of the planet and to build movement with meaning for ourselves, our communities, and our art making practices. We will combine embodied anatomical studies from the perspective of Body-Mind Centering ® with movement experiences on the land at Earthdance.

The BodyCartography Project investigates the physical resonance of space in urban, domestic, wild, technological and social landscapes through dance, film and installation work. Directors Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad have created works for eight short films and over one hundred and fifty live events internationally. www.bodycartography.org

Interdisciplinary Project: August 6 – 7
Dirt and Digging: 2 days towards a 2h Performance
Claudia Wittmann
This 2-day long workshop will prepare us for a 2-hour long performance during which we will use our hands to dig into soil. The work will focus on physical and emotional transformation, using butoh principles and some concepts and techniques drawn from the curriculum of Jerzy Grotowski.

Claudia Wittmann (CH/CA) works as a butoh performer since 2003. Her work deals with body memory. Her process is based on her butoh training with SU-EN and on her regular work with artist Paul Couillard who guides her through the curricula of Jerzy Grotowski since January 2006.

Interdisciplinary Project: August 6 – 7
Three Miles an Hour
Tamara Ashley
This workshop involves deep immersion in the landscape through walking, moving and perceiving. We will develop sensitive response to processes of bodies and landscapes: change, duration, erosion, deposition and exchange between landscape and performer. What emerges from the sustained investigation of the movement of the mind and body at three miles an hour? Tamara Ashley (UK) has undertaken a number of durational and site sensitive improvised performances, such as Performing the Pennine Way, a 31 day performance along the UK national trail with fellow artist Simone Kenyon, and 32 degrees, an improvisation in a world of tiny glaciers. She teaches and performs nationally and internationally on a variety of interdisciplinary projects.

August 7 – 10
Western Mass Moving Arts Festival
This is Earthdance at its best - a chance to study improvisation intensively as well as to sample from a wonderful array of local and national teachers. Morning intensives are an opportunity to dive deep, while the afternoon schedule rotates, so that you can try out diverse modalities. Evening events include a performance by festival faculty and a jam with live improvised music. Intersecting with SEEDS, this year's focus is ecology, with the following intensives:

Morning Intensives:

Transitions: From and To
Jennifer Monson
The focus of this workshop will be transitions- motion to stillness, day to night, growth to decomposition, image to structure. Using processes that have developed from a wide range of dance and environmental research we will develop systems to both observe and create transitions in our own dancing and dance making in relation to our environment.

Jennifer Monson is artistic director of iLAND – Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance. Her work grows out of the combined practices of dance and environmental research. She is a professor at the University of Illinois and teaches to a wide range of communities internationally

The Art of Making a True Move
Arawana Hayashi
A true move is the powerful expression that emerges moment by moment from a space in which self and the world are playing. The workshop explores genuineness, expressed as the harmony of attention, body and environment. Participants practice four forms – the Twenty Minute Dance, the Village, Duets and the Field Dance -- to deepen improvisation capacities. Arawana Hayashi 's work as a choreographer, performer and educator is deeply sourced in improvisation, collaboration and the ancient Japanese court dance, bugaku . She directed the Jo Ha Kyu Performance Group in Cambridge, MA until 2000. She currently teaches at Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership, Nova Scotia; the Presencing Institute, Cambridge, MA; and the Naropa University Authentic Leadership program, Boulder, CO.

ReWilding
Aaron Jessup
Using Contact Improvisation, nature awareness and wilderness survival skills we will slip between the cracks in the walls that separate us from nature, ourselves and each other.  Lets have fun, get dirty, experience intensity and reconnect to our instincts as we move our bodies, explore the land and expand our senses. 

Aaron Jessup 's first movement discipline was circus acrobatics but his first movement love was Contact Improvisation, which he began teaching in 1997.  In 2006 Aaron completed a yearlong wilderness skills, animal tracking and ecology training at the Wilderness Awareness School.  He recently founded the Institute for the Study of Awareness in Nature.

August 10 – 17
Opening to the Unknown:  An Eco-Poetic Approach to Improvisation and Dance
Chris Aiken and Andrew de L. Harwood
In the 10 th anniversary of OTU , we will complete the decade by viewing dance improvisation through the lens of ecology and art.  Awareness, at its core, is rooted in perception of the self and the environment.  In this workshop we are particularly interested in ways in which artfulness is informed and enhanced through the layering of ecological awareness with poetic exploration.  Composition is for us the exploration of form and imagination towards a goal of expression and communication.  We view artistic practice in terms of the depth of one's relationships to interwoven worlds—the world of our body, our personal relationships, our immediate environment, and so on to include ever-larger, and ever - s maller ecosystems.  Our ability to engage in creative process demands that we develop the perceptual skills to notice what is happening around us.

Chris Aiken is a leading international teacher and performer of dance improvisation and contact improvisation. His work is informed by extensive research in perception, aesthetics, design, and somatics. He has received numerous awards for his work including a Guggenheim Fellowship and most recently a Commissioning Grant from the National Performance Network to create "Dwell", which he co-created with Angie Hauser. Andrew de L. Harwood is a leading international teacher, performer and creator in the field of instantaneous choreography and contact improvisation since 1975. Andrew studied, taught and performed with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and Nita Little, the founding members Contact Improvisation. He also has extensive practice in gymnastics, yoga, modern dance, release technique, compositional improvisation and Aikido.

Interdisciplinary Project: August 10 – 17
Through Science to Somatics: Exploring the Physical Components of Thought
Melinda Buckwalter, with science and somatic specialists
Single-Day Drop-Ins Welcome!
In this week-long laboratory we'll engage in fieldwork with scientists from a variety of disciplines (e.g. botany, entomology, geology) in the woods, streams, and fields around Earthdance in pursuit of examples of physical components of thought which we'll further explore performatively in facilitation with somatics and movement investigators.

Melinda Buckwalter is an improviser, dance maker, and writer. She has a BA in physics from Cornell University and an MFA in dance from Bennington College. Currently she teaches anatomy and kinesiology for yogis and dancers, and is writing a book on dance improvisation for Dance & Movement Press, Composing while dancing: An Improviser's Companion, coming in 2008. Melinda lives Cummington, Massachusetts with her husband and dog and is an associate editor for Contact Quarterly.  

Interdisciplinary Project: August 10 – 17
Dancing with Forest: Open Experiments in Living Ecology
Terre Unité Parker and Kate Bailey
In Open Experiments , we blend forms, develop trust, and push the boundaries of performance. Through mind and body perspectives, both artistic and scientific, we move beyond awareness to living ecology. We create performance scores as an invitation for the environment to “speak” through us.

Terre Unité Parker is an experimental dancer and member of Anna Halprin's performance collective. When Terre was one, her mother placed her in the grass and she began to dance. Through dance, Terre seeks a direct experience of interdependence and hopes to inspire sustainable action. Kate Bailey is a passionate environmental educator, artist, and explorer of life and nature. Kate's accessible, engaging activities illuminate interdependence in the environment. A former teacher at Slide Ranch (CA) and the Hitchcock Center for the Environment (MA), Kate's passion for environmental and food justice is apparent in everything she does .

Interdisciplinary Project: August 12
"Eco-moves for Kids" Curriculum Development Think-tank
Martha Eddy and Jane Vorburger
"Eco-moves for Kids" Curriculum Development Think-tank will give childhood educators an opportunity to discuss and explore potential lesson plans that would foster students' stewardship of the earth and social development via interdisciplinary coursework that combines creative movement with environmental science classes. This is a three-day research think tank that culminates with this one-day training open to all.

Martha Eddy, Director of Somatic Studies/Moving On Center & Center for Kinesthetic Education ( www.WellnessCKE.net ) , is an internationally recognized leader of dance somatics. Began the first somatic training to blend LMA and BMC in 1991. Consults in schools integrating kinesthetic awareness into academic, aesthetic, health, and socio-emotional lives of diverse children. Jane Vorburger began dancing with American Ballet Theater at age 16. She left to study Contact Improvisation and Biology at Oberlin College and completed her MFA degree at Tisch NYU. Jane currently teaches dance in NYC and is collaborating on the outreach project “Eco-Moves for Kids” with Martha Eddy.

Interdisciplinary Project: August 14
Eco-systemic Cognition: Relational Presence and Dynamic Embodiment Marlon Barrios Solano
We will explore the many forms of metaphorical trade between dance, science, technology and religion in order to understand a very complex cognitive phenomenon: dance.  This practical workshop will be framed within the influential embodied cognition approach, the history of cybernetics and its "mind/body stories" and its impact in new dance practices.

Marlon : I am a Venezuelan independent performer, vlogger, inter-media artist, interaction designer and consultant, US-based since 1994. I create improvisational digital real-time environments for performance/installations and on-line platforms for collaboration and knowledge bases; recent projects include collaborations with musicians, choreographers, dancers, architects, theater artists, community organizations, new media artists and the creation of the social networks: www.dance-tech.net and www.hyper-arts.net . I have lectured extensively on improvisation, new media, embodiment and cognition and performed in South America, Europe and the USA. I work as a new media strategist for Dance New Amsterdam in NYC and hold an MFA in Dance and New Media from The Ohio State University.

Interdisciplinary Project: August 15
Soundscaping the Land Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren
Sounding the Landscape will investigate diverse ways of mapping noise in soundscape of the land in order to allow us to hear, to respond to, and move with that which we do not typically hear, and subsequently to re-imagine the moving body and its relation to the land.

Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren , a performance artist, scholar, and Certified Laban Movement Analyst, teaches courses such as Garbage as Art, Creativity Studies, and Performance and Healing at the University of Washington, Bothell. Her current performance work includes “scratching through the memory lines” and “protective skins and trip wires.”

SEEDS CELEBRATION: August 16
The SEEDS Celebration is an all-ages public celebration of our land and our festival's offerings. We will present a host of workshops, offerings, performances, and conversations on arts and ecology. This is a great day to stop by Earthdance see the fruits of the SEEDS we have planted. You are welcome to participate in the daytime workshops and showings, and come to our evening events.