Nature's Polyphony

This research project is an intimate investigation into our interactions within a woodland environment, delving deep into the materiality and systems present and looking at both local and wider ecologies. Through creating an embodied practice, a lens into the uniqueness of this world, I hope to cultivate awareness, understanding and empathy towards it.

Through solo studies and a process of documenting through writing, photography and film, practices and scores emerged that formed the basis of two dance and movement workshops. The workshops were aimed at both a community local to the area in which I was working and a community of dance and movement artists from around London. This fed back into what is an evolving philosophy and practice of moving with nature.

Nature’s Polyphony is a way to acknowledge the multiplicity and diversity of organisms in nature; their substance, temporality, expression, rhythm, whilst bringing these elements together. Creating a layered and simultaneous choir, connecting and responding in real time to the collective, to a symbiotic system and oneness. It is also a way to synthesise the research, to dance the practice and phenomena of moving and learning from nature.

Workshops have run in collaboration with Forest Gate Community Garden and Forest Gate Arts on Wanstead Flats, as part of Vanessa Grasse’s Mesh and The Land We Are projects, supported by Arts Council England.