Thanks for your interest in Land Art Retreat @ Shepherd’s Nine. As there is limited space, please be in touch (email below) as soon as possible and we will confirm availability. Please submit to this email: shepherdsnine@protonmail.com by April 1st.
In a paragraph, please introduce yourself by describing a recent collaborative experience, and tell us what attracts you to the retreat, what is meaningful about your current relationship to land, and how you imagine collaborating with land during our time together.
Land Art Retreat Statements from Your Hosts:
Hi, I am Melinda Buckwalter, a movement researcher and writer living in Western Massachusetts / Mahican territory. My most recent collaboration is an outgrowth of a long term one, the stewardship of Contact Quarterly, the dance and improvisation journal, as it transforms its leadership roles towards an editorial collective. My movement interest is in understanding what it means to embrace the “land as pedagogy” as put forward by Anishinaabe Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2017). For example, in making a dance I might include place as an active collaborating choreographer. How does the land inform the choreography I make there? As a settler, I see myself as an uninvited guest who must come to terms with the fact that, although my ancestors are European, my Landcestors are Native American. How do I greet the Landcestors who face extermination and invizibilization at the hands of colonial settlers? This problematic will inform my approach to making with the land at Noyes School of Rhythm in Portland, CT, territory of the Wangunk people.
My name is Colleen Bartley, a US American based in London, England (with an Irish Passport). I’ve been involved with many collaborate dance projects including ECITE (European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange) in France, Hungary, Spain and Hungary and London Contact Improvisation where we organise weekly community dance events. I’ve been a participant on various artistic residencies in Wales and the US that involve movement, ecology and art. I’ve worked extensively with ideas from Body and Earth and experiential anatomy. I’m particularly interested in integration and cross-pollination and co-existing, rest and working with self practice in community. I have come to Shepherd’s Nine for Noyes teachings over the years and am very curious what might emerge with this constellation of people at this particular time of year bringing their visions, practices and experiences. I’m fascinated by the creative process and sourcing movement and giving time for rest and deep listening. How imagine collaborating with land: going for walks, getting lost and tuning into the season and working at the transitions of day: dawn and dusk. I am drawn to work with water, trees and people. I could imagine creating a walk and possibly a movement score.
I am Emily Arwen Mott, a musician, body-work practictioner, and dancer living in Burlington, Vermont. I have spent time at several artist communities, some working farms, some forest re-generation projects. I have also taught Noyes Nature Rhythm in multiple cooperative-living retreats. The land is always a speaking member of my world. On this particular small area of earth, I have wandered, danced, and slept for the summers all of my life, and from two generations back. In these few days I will intend to dwell deep enough to both find assurance and expression in song and movement of the grief of lost people and species.
