Flora Fauna Project: ROOM (2020/2021)
ROOM is Flora Fauna Project's third platform. Here we bring you close to some extraordinary artists and community exchanges from all over the world.
We can’t replace the live experience that dance/theatre offers, nor will we try to attempt to present multi-dimensional, real-life and physical work digitally. Instead, we present to you seven artists whose life and work led them to meaningful and inspiring community collaborations. They are prolific artists working and creating, and at the same time bridging social gaps and sharing the intelligence of dance with groups and collaborators of mixed abilities and backgrounds. The social ripple effects of these collaborations are transformational, full of possibility and hope for a more unified society.
Our bodies are wired with a natural intelligence that can be accessed and harnessed to retrieve our most authentic selves. The intelligence that dance and movement based practices have to offer can move us out of the holes we have buried ourselves in. Community, self care and non-judgement can break cycles of fear and violence so that together we can begin to heal, transform and work peacefully towards a better world. This always begins locally, and we dare to suggest as locally as the individual body.
During this heightened period of separation we got as close to the artists as we could, curious to know what they have learned, what motivates them and what brought them to this place of leadership and collaboration.
Together with Canadian museum practitioner, multi disciplinary researcher and dance writer Jo Minhinnett, we selected and reached out to seven artists in total, whose collaborations include people incarcerated in solitary confinement, people living with Parkinson’s disease, theatre, surfing, education, hospital groups, scientists, youth and elderly groups. We spoke with the artists informally and these conversations are available for you to hear and/or read. Each artist also gave us material from their own work, life and process.
ROOM was, and is, about people coming together. It's about giving the artists and their community-focused work ROOM in a crowded online space.
Solidarity, Natural Intelligence, Healing, Community, Empathy, Equality and Permission to Feel are some of the themes that came up again and again in our conversations with the artists while creating and giving ROOM. We offer an opportunity for us all to direct our attention towards these values. We invite you in to ROOM, and hope that you will find inspiration while reflecting on what’s possible when we move together.
Maria Nilsson Waller + Stace Gill
// FLORA FAUNA PROJECT
Check out our Community Engagement page to read about Flora Fauna Projects previous work.
