all started back with a long term research of deconstruction of the trapeze as object and as movement practice itself.
the circus realm is ruled by the trick paradigm, my body is trained since 25 years to mould itself into preconcepted shapes and lines called tricks. And my body is so so much familiar with the architecture of the trapeze, the 60 cm of space on a straight horizontal between two ropes. It knows literally blindly where to grab and catch. A great skill, but very well beaten tracks…I felt the need to soften these rigid structures of circus. However breaking the movement patterns in improvisations on the trapeze turned out to be not as easy as I thought… but what if…
… what if I would experiment my movement practice in a slightly different sourrounding – still with the basic features that allow for a certain suspension of the body in midair, but less well known territory.
In a Residency in Vienna I found pyramidal structures of bamboo. The owner of these structures, Willian Lopez uses them for his movement practice called Bamboo Flow. It is based on the brasilian ‘Integral Bambu Movement’ – »a method for acquiring Sensitive Knowledge and indicates several paths towards Choreographic Art by employing a wide array of techniques that range from its particular style of body conditioning and perceptual awakening to poetic construction.« (Martins, R. Integral Bambu – papa a arte coreografica relato de um corpo vivente)
In order to challenge myself to deal with a greater variety of forms and characteristics I went outside in nature, which I love a lot as sourrounding to move in and made a series of Tree Encounters in a parc. The one-on-one meetings with still alive tree organisms happened spontaneously, so as I did not study a tree but just met it one time only, entering directly in a physical meeting of bodies. That way I made experiences that challenged my openess and that overwhelmed my trapeze mind, because many trapeze specific patterns could not directly be transferred to this always new environments. Each day I would meet another tree individual in an immediate physical encounter, without thinking and analysing the ‘architectural’ shape before, without any plan despite the one to move with it, on it and around it.
These confrontations with an always new dance partner made it indeed more evident when and how the embodied knowledge was taking the lead. Since the mind had no previous knowledge it was easier to keep it calm. All the experience and knowledge my body gained in all these years of aerial practice now started to unfold…
It is about a free cultivation, so to say permacultural approach of growing a
mind|bodyset of movement practice in becoming
Over past the years I enjoyed a whole lot of these special intimate meetings, with tree creatures all around the globe. I documented a intense series of these in parcs of Berlin through an exposition on the Platform ResearchCatalogue. This was a funded project by Fonds Darstellende Künste – the TREE ENCOUNTERS # Berlin series.
The Berlin series of the Tree Encounters was a geographically and time-wise well defined venture, however the research is still ongoing. In the following slide-show you can get an impression of various other TREE ENCOUNTERS:
