I run an organisation called Landance, facilitating site-specific contemporary dance in the landscape.
Landance runs workshops leading to performances for people of all ages
and abilities in the landscape. Our work involves collaboration between
dance, music and visual art with participants taking part in whichever
creative discipline they choose. Workshops incorporate improvisation and
creative work that is a response to the site, which might be the flora,
fauna, heritage, geology, moods and feel of the place, encouraging
abstract interpretation.
I have worked as a theatre designer, a lecturer and as a
potter. Creating environments and atmospheres on stage has been replaced
by a desire to create performances within existing environments,
bringing people into the landscape to collaborate creatively.
I think that our senses are heightened when we are outdoors,
we see, hear and move differently, we are more relaxed and open to
play. We feel better! Creative work is less self-conscious, teenagers
engage and lose their awkwardness about being ‘cool’, adults immerse
themselves in collaboration, children are released by the freedom to
roam. The terrain means movements are more natural, music can be
developed with pebbles and sticks as percussion instruments, drawing
with charcoal on fabric for costumes is free and expressive.
‘Beautifully conceived piece, great to see performers of
all ages make something that was highly interactive with the environment
and original.’
Specific landscapes have distinct atmospheres. I tend to
choose hill forts, often partly wooded. These offer wide ranging views
in certain areas giving an expansive and uplifting setting for the end.
The change in scale that you can manipulate on different sites is
inspiring, placing some near and others far, way beyond the scope of a
stage. Movements, colours, sounds, music, voices resonate through the
trees, sometimes glimpses half seen. The strength of the trees works
well for dance, for pulling and leaning. Light plays miraculously on
foliage and faces.
We work without technology, no noisy generator, no lights,
the music is acoustic. Inevitably there are challenges, getting everyone
to focus when there are so many wonderful distractions. Also transport
is a big issue, how performers and audience access the site, though this
can work in our favour with whole families turning up to bring one
child only to find themselves all taking part. I always arrange
performances over two days in case one gets rained off but so far we’ve
never had to cancel. In the rain in the woods in 2007, dancers and
audience partly sheltered by the dripping leaves, the performance took
on a dreamlike atmosphere, the 2009 and 2010 performances were bathed in
sunlight, what luck.
‘…the sun dappling through the trees added wonderful depths to the movement of your group through the landscape.’
As Anna Golding, co-choreographer 2009/10, choreographer
2012, remarked, “I think that there is a complicity between performers,
artists, organisers and audience that if you are involved in
experiencing outside work, part of the process is exposing yourself to
whatever the sky is doing that day and how it influences the landscape
that you are in. At best, this gives a tangible sense of dancing with
the land as opposed to on it. Having said that, the performers and
audience must be safe and this is where communication is key, with
information about site accessibility and terrain always clear in
publicity and from stewards.”
Sites give distinct moods to the work developed. At Woodbury
Castle in Devon performers stood along a circular ridge of ancient
beech trees, then rushed down to a clearing to perform in small groups
amongst the audience. They wandered through eerie woods bringing the
audience behind them, ears tuned to distant song and eyes looking out
for flashes of colour through branches. A tunnel of light at the head of
the path drew the performers and audience on and allowed a beautiful
silhouetted duet evoking Indonesian shadow puppetry. Moving forward, the
audience were suddenly on open heathland with the sea in the distance.
Dancers were positioned in amongst windswept grasses, dropping away to
the distant coastline with movement and sounds inspired by crickets,
sand lizards and indigenous butterflies.
At Castle Neroche in Somerset dancers lay hidden in bracken,
waving their arms sinuously like strange plants amongst the ferns, they
hid behind trees, suddenly appearing here and there, then disappearing
again, children created a sculpture on a log, figures emerged from a
hedge bank ominously descending towards the audience. Lengths of
strongly coloured fabric were used to draw lines in the air, for dancers
to lean on, pull on, manipulate, to delineate a stage area for the
audience to gather around. Performers wove tall blue silk flags through
the green foliage.
‘I was totally enchanted and grateful to have been given
this opportunity to experience art and nature coming together in
celebration.’
Performances are promenade, you walk, watch, listen and
experience the landscape all at once. They are in daylight in the early
evening, so that small children and older people can be part of the
audiences. Stewards guide the audience silently, leading them and
stopping, sometimes laying a length of fabric down to indicate their
boundaries. At other times musicians lead the audience along winding
paths. At Castle Neroche, Charlie Hearnshaw the composer, taught the
audience a song as they gathered waiting for the performance, which they
sung later whilst moving from one area of performance to another. Small
children in the audience imitate the dancers after the show, running
around and climbing up on tree trunks.
‘I loved the fact that there were children performing
with adults or with each other. There was a sense of community and
communion.’
All of our dance, visual and sound artists have assistants,
which offers valuable experience to emerging artists and provides an
important link between disciplines and activity on site.
Landance has evolved slowly, I have received advice and
support from local arts and education agencies and organisations. The
knowledge and contacts of these professionals have been crucial to the
growth and evolution of Landance as have the artists that have been
involved.
In 2007 the choreographer Joanne Willmott and I collaborated
on the first Landance, with Taunton Youth Dance Company members and
older individuals. Landance 2009 and 2010 projects were developed with
Anna Golding and Rachelle Green, with a longer run up of workshops at
the local community school in 2009, with music by Charlie Hearnshaw, and
in 2010 Dominic Rott facilitated parkour work with the participants.
Filmmaker Richard Tomlinson has documented all the projects for the
website.
The next Landance project will be set at Eggardon Hill in
West Dorset, an exposed undulating site with no trees. It offers a huge
canvas to meld into, land and sky, with distant views to the Jurassic
Coast. It inspires thoughts of flight, a sense of anticipation felt just
before leaving the ground, birds appear suddenly, skylarks and birds of
prey. I am collaborating again with Anna, the choreographer, and
commissioning a score from composer Andrew Dickson, who will develop it
with a small choir before working with many more singers. Projecting the
more subtle parts of the score will be a challenge. It is a large-scale
project, involving dance groups and choirs as well as individuals.
Anna again commented, “One of the exciting aspects of the
next project is that we are establishing a new Landance adult
contemporary dance group who will be based locally and who will continue
to explore and experiment beyond the performance, giving us a sounding
board for future Landance development.”
We believe we are developing work that intensifies the
vastness you experience at Eggardon, it’s like being on top of the
world, as well as the intimacy of the dips and valleys in the site.
Working outdoors gives natural emphasis to those changes in scale. Our
collaboration, entwining our creative disciplines, is energising and
inspiring, we are creating a basic structure around which participants
can improvise and develop a responsive relationship with the site and
each other. I aim for this project to have an abstract simplicity, pure
colour, line, form and sound, in keeping with the expanse of terrain
with which we are working.
‘Stunning synthesis of land, scenery, music, dance on a
gorgeous sunny autumn afternoon. We should have the opportunity to
experience more work like this, makes the soul soar and troubles
evaporate!’
contact ella@landance.org.uk / 07817 908 964 or goldinganna@gmail.com / visit www.landance.org.uk