Tree Dances
Objectives:
This activity serves both as a method of bridging the gap between dance and play, as well as asking participants to look at the environment with new perspective. What are the embodied experiences that we had as children, but never recognized as an embodied experience, or perhaps even dance? What are embodied experiences that are difficult to achieve, simply because they are on a different physical level than we normally operate on?
Conditions:
This activity requires trees with low branches that people can either climb, or interact with on the ground. A tree map is recommended.
This activity should only be done in fairly mild weather. Ask participants to dress appropriately.
Participants will need a smartphone, a notebook/piece of paper, and a sharpie (or other ink-heavy marker).
Section One: Warm-up
A few minutes.
Ask participants to examine the opposition within their body and make some form of peace with it. This may be done in many ways—exploring head-tail connection, exploring how far apart bones can be spread, making “snow” angels on the floor. This is just a warm-up, so participants are allowed to take it in a direction that they see fit.
Section Two: Journeying
2 minutes.
Lay out a map of the trees that have been selected for this activity, which label which trees are best for climbing, or for being with on the ground. Ask participants to select where they would like to go to. If participants have a different tree that they would like to go to, they may go there. Travel time should be kept to less than five minutes.
Explain the score, which is as follows (the parts may be completed in any order, done for any amount of time, or skipped altogether):
Arrive at your tree, and stand a few feet away from it. Look it up and down. Examine any hollows, strange branches, or particular characteristics. If you are planning to climb the tree, think about how you might get up.
Keep a few questions in mind during the duration of this lesson:
Why was this tree placed where it is?
Is this tree native to the environment?
What is this tree used for?
What are my own roots that have been placed here?
Take a picture of your tree and save it for later.
Climb the tree (or stand beneath the tree)
—
Settle into a comfortable position and spend a moment looking out from the tree. Take stock of the space around you.
Play a game in which you interact with the tree with the word prompts “around”, “with”, and “within”. Between each of these words, find positions and movements to match. Take a moment of stillness with each word and movement.
Once you have tired of this exploration, settle into a hollow or space in the tree. Sit or stand comfortably. Extend your limbs slowly out along the branches around you, feeling the bark along the way. Take a few minutes with this extension, until you have stretched as far as is comfortable. Take a moment, and then relax.
Take a short moment to practice “surveying”. Start with your fingers along the tree bark, and see what crevices can be found.
Find a place that you can lean out of the tree and look down towards the ground. Examine the connection between the tree’s shadow, and your own shadow. Play with the shapes that these shadows create. Move around the tree, and watch how these shadows, and this connection change.
Settle back into the hollow or crevice from before, and take a moment to sit/stand with eyes closed. See if you can comfortably repeat the extension from before with your eyes closed. What new things can you find?
—
Climb down from your tree, and take out your notebook. Put a page up against the tree bark, and complete a textural image of the bark by rubbing the edge of a sharpie along the page (the aim is not to get the image of the bark, but rather the texture). Save this textural picture, and bring it back to the classroom.
Be back in 20-25 minutes.
Section Three: Tree Dances
20-25 minutes.
Send participants away to do the score, as described above.
Section Four: Sending
When participants return, thank them for their willingness to play. Have everyone sit in a circle and pass their bark rubbing around. Everyone should rub their fingers over the page to sample a “teaspoon” of each other’s experience. Ask them to send their tree image, and a picture of their bark sketch.
Bark rubbings should have this textural element to it.
