‘A holding space’: emergence and entanglement in tree spaces

Hunter, V (2024) '‘A holding space’: emergence and entanglement in tree spaces.' In: Hunter, V and Turner, C, eds. The Routledge companion to site-specific performance. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 361-374. ISBN 9781032254104

Text 16715.pdf - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 17 June 2026.

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore site dance and related participatory arts work that engages with ‘tree spaces’ such as woodlands and forests. I consider how this work engages with and activates Anthropocene discourses through performance, dance and movement practice that aims to bring individuals and groups ‘closer’ to nature, and the complexity of tree spaces. Following this overview, I offer a reflection on my own site dance micro project A Holding Space conducted from June to September 2021 in Kingley Vale, an ancient Yew Forest, and the South Downs Sustainability Centre in West Sussex in which I developed dance performance that responded to and processed lockdown experiences encountered during the first two waves of the UK Covid-19 pandemic (2019–2021). In this chapter, I consider the significance of site dance in tree spaces in relation to these wider discourses and events and reflect on how embodied traces of lockdown experiences archived within the body were revisited, explored and employed in the development of A Holding Space (2021), and how these archived experiences were reflected in public workshop activities through the participants’ movement repertoires (Taylor 2003). As opposed to erasing these archived experiences in the rush towards establishing a (post-pandemic) ‘new normal’, in this chapter I reflect on how they re-emerged through embodied movement practice informed by individual and collective memory and how they were acknowledged as vital records of trauma, endurance and loss.

Item Type:	Book Chapter or Section
Divisions:	Bath School of Music and Performing Arts
Related URLs:	https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-...
Date Deposited:	28 Nov 2024 13:41
Last Modified:	08 Jan 2025 17:48
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/16715

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