Place give us different time perception and alter our way of being. I’m feeling slowing down in wide space and peaceful in wood. Sound play an interesting part of this feeling for me. It’s like a hole. I feel sounds shrinking or expanding in space and my body follows this feeling. As time goes on and the project is in the last mile, I identified “places” or “universes” that will be part of the film. The train, trees in different spaces, the cabin, the studio. All of them are present in my life and are part of my nature. They will help me to find their relation(s) to Nature. And not only because they are part of the wildlife here but, like I said before, because the composition will rewire what I see. The train is part of the natural environment in Canada; the trees are literally everywhere; the cabin is made of wood and is now a place where animals, mushroom, wind define the nature of it. It shows how we build space to collect stuff and try to keep the memory of our own existence (which is finite). This observation brings a lot to think about dance, art and life for me and I like to explore this path. The studio is helping me to clarify new relation and open new relation to things because I can change the context. But … As I discuss with my collaborator (Olivier Arseneault), maybe the studio won’t be part of the film.
Everything is still unstable at this stage.
This month, I was also working with sound, recording steps, nature, steps in nature, my life, etc. To try to explore what could be the soundscape for the film. How I can bring my dance practice into this realm to give more space to nature and still have a connection between both. I think I already said it: images and sounds don’t need to be a true relation for me. But I want to bring complexity to what the image said with sound. Like giving clues about what behind a human when you see a human in nature. And what could possibly have an impact on the relation I try to imagine with the film … because my relation with nature is complex and what I want and what I do is two things.
So … I need to think about it and I need to play with it.
As you can imagine, this project gives me lots of time to think about my relation to nature. Actually, I’ve seen how much “nature” is involved in our childhood and our house. How much we engage with animals, flower, insects in our first experiences of grabbing, sucking, touching, throwing … I didn’t realize it since the last month. Almost every little toy my little boy using to play is an animal. And what’s confusing, it’s the way playing mean at this age and how it stays in ourselves. For them, grabbing a little goat and throwing it away is funny. The goat is literally an object and I wonder if this relation stay in our way to engage with the world when we grow up…