NightFire :: Environmental Dance Gallery

GREENBREATHING
July 23, 2006
Eberwhite Woods and Zion Community Garden, Ann Arbor
Moving with the woods, streaming green-gold light, and clowning in the Community Garden afterwards.

SOLSTICE
June 25, 2006
Island Park, Ann Arbor
Dancing in the river and on its bank, with live percussion, hand-held candles, intense Asian sparklers, and a solstice feast among the fireflies.

LAND
Oct. 22, 2006
The land line grrlz after the performance: Jennifer, Irena, Kim and Christina, with retriever Harper Lee near center at our feet. Walking with land line phones through a city is highly recommended. The things you find to talk about can be revelatory. If the nice person who was taking photos of us across Washington St. sees this and would like to send them to be posted here, please do! This one was taken with a cell phone camera by Harper's human, Daniel Sheehan.

BRIDGE
August 27 and Sept. 10,
under M-14 Ramp Bridge by Huron River, Bandemer Park, Ann Arbor
The bridge and its environs became the scene for a myth-history of the planet and humans' relationship with their kin of all species. The highway was surf overhead. We danced with the rocks, the grasses, the expanse of earth beneath the bridge that revealed itself as vast and interdimensional, and the beautiful-wise serpent, the river flowing by. At night a train passed through with its windows alight. We left the tree, with poetry leaves solicited from community members and friends from afar, as an offering to the place.

With this outdoor dance theater series in various urban and natural locations, our intention is to allow the places and seasons to speak through us, while weaving into them human elements of creativity and mythic imagination. Dancers and audience are drawn into a sense of kinship with the alien "other" in the shared heart of many rhythms. Combining and breathing with a place, the environment is experienced as alive in its own right and in every part.