On Friday August 16 and Sunday August 18 the cohort attended two dance and movement workshops led by residency participant Aimée Dawn Robinson in the woods outside her cabin near the Carcross Cutoff. 

Jacob’s Process Notes:
When any group arrives to work together, they’re usually coming from all sorts of places and with busy minds. To do the exploration and have the conversations we hoped to have, arriving in the same time and same place in an embodied way would be required.

We found ourselves in the woods. Aimee’s work, Trace Practices, combines her trainings and background into an experience that centered our bodies and minds, connected us with gravity and the ground under our feet and developed trust between us and provided an opportunity to dance with the trees. 

With many of us coming from non-performance traditions, I was nervous and excited for these days. 

Dance and theatre practices place importance on embodied presence that is often overlooked in contemporary living. Even as business and innovation sectors catch up to the central role that holistic physical practices and mindfulness play in a good life and in effective collaboration, taking people out to the woods to dance is a risk. My nerves quickly passed as the participants, from all their backgrounds, opened up to the work and explored with generosity and focus.

Being in the woods, interacting with the lichen, the trees and the moss with our bodies and imagination moved the residency from the abstract to the real. It set a tone that we are not so separate or removed from nature, but that we, as humans with bodies, are intimately and very practically connected and entangled with the earth.