land-dance: land-based dance practices for movers and makers

UPDATE: May 5 10am-1pm | all are welcome | sliding scale $5-$25 donation and/or something to offer the group or the land. No one turned away for lack of funds.

land-dance: land-based dance practices for movers and makers is an outdoor dance experience that expands our ideas of where and when dance takes place. together we will open our senses to the land that surrounds us and explore how the natural world influences our breath, our movement, and our impulses. we will play with taking class on uneven surfaces while expanding our focus to the layers of trees and sky. we will work with our senses, in slow, and rigorous ways, and be guided by movement scores compiled by the Hungry Mothers Collective – Flood Drafts: a Field Guide to Sensuous Repair – to tap into land-based composition and gratitude for the earth.  all levels and abilities welcome.  all are welcome. 

(Due to the presence of ticks in this region, we realize the idea of moving outside may feel prohibitive to some. We encourage participants to wear light colored clothing, long pants and shirts and comfortable shoes. We will stop regularly to do quick tick checks and will provide tick spray. With some mindfulness, we don’t have to let the presence of ticks impede our ability to go outdoors and connect with the land.)

Facilitators: lisa nevada and Tyler Rai

lisa nevada spent most of her life in Nuevoméxico, but now follows a migration route that has placed her in an area of Lenape territory more commonly known as Brooklyn, NY.  she is a naturalist, a dancemaker, collaborator & coconspirator, educator, and advocate for the Rights of Nature.  encounters with humans and more-than-human bolster her desire to create offerings of performance and education that are centered on gratitude and ignites kinship with mama earth.  her embodied research delves into sonic realms of lullaby and wailing in response to humanity’s active destruction of psyche and home. 

Tyler Rai is a movement artist and writer currently based in Nipmuc/Pocumtuc Territories (Western Massachusetts). Through performance and movement improvisation, her research questions how we embody kinship and relational empathy with the other/more-than-human-world. Her works have been performed at Judson Memorial Church, ARC Pasadena, SPACE Gallery, SWALE (a barge and floating food-forest), Governors Island, and The School for Contemporary Dance and Thought. Her approach to performance and research is shaped by the work of multiple teachers including Anna Halprin, K.J. Holmes, Mina Nishimura, Emily Johnson and Suprapto Suryodarmo, among others. Rai is a founding member of the collaborative curatorial platform, ERRATICS, with artists/researchers Nina Elder and Hannah Perrine Mode, and is the instigator of the temporal collective, Hungry Mothers (www.hungrymothers.org). Rai received her B.A. from Bennington College and is a certified Tamalpa Life/Art Practitioner.

---

Performative Meal

June 11, time TBA

A performative meal with collaborators TBA and audience.

Facilitator: Athena Kokoronis / Domestic Performance Agency

Athena Kokoronis is an artist, chef, mother, choreographer, writer, designer, living in NYC. Domestic Performance Agency is her art brand name, a practice of caring and collaborating with/in. As an art brand that holds all the things an artist is asked to do, DPA invites collaborations. DPA’s choreographic process gives attention to aspects of performance production, curation, food, cloth, and searches for the creative economy within these realms that begins and extends out of domestic scale with hospitality. Choreographic problem-solving with time, sensitivity, and intimacy are at the core of the DPA vision. Costume design is elemental to the DPA process. Costume collaborations have been with Jasmine Hearn, Maria Bauman, Urban Bush Women, Tatyana Tennebaum, Jessie Young, Angie Pittman, David Thomson, Marion Spencer, Tyler Rai. 

With Yonkers International Press (YIP) in conjunction with Dance & Process series at the Kitchen, Athena Kokoronis published CookBook Domestic Performance Agency in 2018 and a second book in 2019 in conjunction with The New School Centennial exhibibition. In experimental fashion, DPA is represented by the Lydia Rodrigues Collection (LRCNYC.ONLINE) Domesticperformanceagency@gmail.com to learn more.

---

Lichen Party !

June 17-19, 11am-1pm | all are welcome | sliding scale $5-$25 per day donation and/or something to offer the group or the land. No one turned away for lack of funds.

In an era of ecological collapse and species extinctions impacted by unrestricted extraction of the land, what is the value of trying to see the world through the eyes of the more than human? Foregrounding the symbiotic relationship of lichens, Lichen Party proposes that we learn about lichens in order to learn from them by cultivating what artist Zheng Bo calls “ecosensibilities” —”honing our ability to sense and respect the natural forms of life that surround us.” Who are lichens? What would it feel like to experience their sense of time? How might experiencing the world through their perspective change our relationship to each other and the land? Each day will have a different focus of land based practices, slipping from observational inquiry into imaginative, embodied and physical practice. Activities include lichen identification and general facts, sensory walks, performative games, guided meditations, natural dyeing and more.

Day 1:  Presence as a gift

Participants are invited on a silent sensory walk followed by some games that will get us into a mode of experiencing how we can gift our attention and presence, both to each other and the land. Culminating in group and individual mini-performances.

Day 2: Cultivating ecosensibilities / from observing to becoming / embodiment 

Participants are invited on a stimulating lichen walk, interwoven with meditative embodiment practices. We will learn about the fascinating world of lichens (biology, identification, history, ecology) and then experience it! Borrowing the phrase cultivating ecosensibilities from artist Zheng Bo, we will be taking our ecological observations and putting them into physical practice. The day will culminate in participants creating their own imaginative meditations from observations of trees, plants, mosses, and larger ecologies.

Day 3: Making/Materiality

Participants are invited to bring gathered materials from instructions provided ahead of time. We will learn about the history of lichen dyeing and practice dyeing as a gift-based practice that connects people, plants, and ecologies through a burst of color embedded in a shared material. While we wait for the fabric to dry, we will make paper from discarded objects and weeds.

Continuous installation:

There will be an ongoing installation in the barn with interactive stations including a microscope playground, a photo gallery, a zine documenting David’s daily practice, and more.

Facilitator: David Guzman

David Guzman is a multidisciplinary performer, dancer and lichen lover. He has performed in queer bars, traditional stages, parks and forests. His most recent performances have been in Bread and Puppet Theatre’s The Persians, which toured in New York and Chicago. He is currently a member of the Headlong Dance Theater Performance Institute cohort, a collaborator and dancer for Mina Nishimura, and translator of Experiments in Choreology, or, Where the Soviet Gesture Has Led Us, a research-dance manual by the dance cooperative Isadorino Gore. Living and researching at another audience in 2021 has radically shifted David’s urges as a performer towards acknowledging the land that makes and unmakes him every day. He is honored to be returning to Black Hole Hollow this summer.

Participants are encouraged but not required to sign up for all three workshops. Registering in advance is much appreciated, but walk-ins are welcome. All levels and abilities are welcome.