Over the past month I’ve been recording sounds around my home and the daily paths I take. I’ve also been lying beneath the trees for long periods of time, observing their sounds and what they hear, the movement within those sound and silences too. There isn’t really many silences at all. There’s always something stirring, even at night.
Looking at the 20 letters of the Celtic Alphabet I created percussive movements to match each of these letters which I will use to write a piece on the forest floor to the trees. I’ve been thinking a lot about the time signature of these rhythms. Am I dancing jig rhythm? A reel? I couldn’t figure it out. But while lying beneath the trees one day just listening with my headphones on plugged into my Zoom microphone, a wood pecker started pecking close by. Her rhythm was so stark in contrast to the other bird song at the moment. I started to imitate it with my feet. Then I tried imitating the skylark. Then the blackbird, the curlew, the sky goat, the buzzard, the wren and more. They all had their own rhythms, tempos, tones, timing but they all fitted perfectly together. And so from this I drew inspiration for my dance piece. There is no set time signature or beat. It’s completely free form yet deeply structured and specific.
As for filming style, I’m planning to film the piece myself and keeping it as simple as possible with one camera, one view. Like the camera is itself a tree, rooted. I feel it should be a simple piece allowing lots of time, to replicate on a very small scale, the amount of time that passes in a trees life. Time to sit and listen and see. Take it all in like you are there. Once they are rooted, they have one view for the rest of their existence.
I’m thinking about focusing the camera on the trees and forest floor rather than on me and my feet and that I would be out of focus for periods of time. I will dance in my feed and earth myself.
I wrote a short piece to the trees. Trying to learn each letter of each word to be able to dance it out on my imaginary Ogham line on the forest floor is intense. I’m still struggling to remember all the patterns without having to revert back to my notes but I’m really enjoying the challenge. I find myself collapsing under the trees like a child throwing a tantrum, sometimes from frustration, other times from exhaustion in trying to dance out my words. And after a few minutes of lying there, listening, breathing, smelling, touching, with my head on the ground looking up, I’m ready to go at it again.
