In Bodywork for Landscape, my dancers practiced qigong together and explored acupressure techniques for a semester. To create the dance, we brought the work outdoors, imagining the land as a body and our bodies as tools for its treatment. We made group scores based on the acupressure terms gathering, tonifying, and dispersing. Sensation was an important element, we tuned ourselves to the landscape by lying and rolling in the grass. Were we treating the land or was it treating us? Our group mind was made visible as we chose from these scores in the moment of performance. Costumed in orange, we were easily traceable across the rolling hills by our audience, attendees of the Asian Cultural Festival. We also performed Bodywork for Landscape for tourists around the base of an obelisk (an Earth-sized acupuncture needle), which commemorates the Revolutionary Battle of Bennington, and indoors during intermission in a theater lobby. These variations strengthen our physical knowledge of how the piece works and communicates, and this in turn informs performance choices.
Bodywork for Landscape from Melinda Buckwalter on Vimeo.
