DACE is a learning site for explorations on dance and art in More-than-Human Worlds.
Public Conversation
On Eco-sensitivity with Zheng Bo and guests
Public conversation on eco-sensitivity DACE, Zheng Bo and invited guests
14th of August 11.00–14.00
Since 2021 DACE has together with Zheng Bo and a team of dancers explored the nature forest of Högsveden through somatic and eco-sensitive dance practices. The first year’s research developed into a video work, Le Sacre du printemps, shown at Färgfabriken during Symbiosis as well as the 59th Venice Biennale 2022. This year, for the first time, a human audience is invited to share the immersive experience of the nature forest and forest dance, focusing on ecological intimacy. On the 14th of August the artistic team and invited guests return from the forest for an open conversation at Färgfabriken where they share their experiences of the eco-sensual dance explorations in Dalarna.
Conversation between Zheng Bo (artist, Hong Kong), DACE/Rickard Borgström & Rebecca Chentinell (curators/eco-facilitators, Finland/Sweden), Harald Beharie (dancer, Norway), Ossi Niskala (dancer, Sweden), Victor Pérez Armero (dancer, Spain), and invited guests Eylül Fidan Akıncı (House Dramaturge, Theater a/d Rijn, Holland), Knut Ove Arntzen (professor emeritus Theater Studies, Norway), Guy Gypens (Head curator performance, KANAL — Centre Pompidou, Belgium), Heine Avdal (choreographer, Norway).
Zheng Bo is currently a studio grant holder at IASPIS in Stockholm.
The project and talk is supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Region Dalarna, The International Dance Program at the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, and part of a cooperation supported by Theatre Info Finland – TINFO’s project which is financed by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Le Sacre du printemps
dance performance
Zheng Bo 鄭波
12 August Högsveden nature forest Dalarna, Sweden
Le Sacre du printemps Zheng Bo 鄭波 Högsveden nature forest in Dalarna, Sweden 12 August Le Sacre du printemps 13-14 August Journey into the (post) anthropocentric landscape of Dalarna
I wish to explore that which don’t revolve around humans, but rather focus on the other living world. In this case the realm of the forest. Is it possible to interact with it and not have the human in the center? – Zheng Bo
Le Sacre du printemps, dance/performance Zheng Bo seeks to cultivate eco-sensitive relationships between human beings and beings of the plant world. The first iteration of Le Sacre du printemps were a serach to find forms of movement for a kind of eco-sexual dance, where humans like pine trees was considered dancing bodies. It posed a great challange even to imagine what such dance would look like;The pine trees are more than 20 meters tall and between 60 and 300 years old, much bigger and older than the human dancers.
This summer Zheng Bo and the dancers revisit Högsveden to nourish their relation and understanding of the nature forest through developing a dance/performance, where also a human audience is invited. In relation to the complex web of elements of the queer ecology of the nature forest, they practice a trans-species sensing choreography. The audience is invited to sense the immersive relational diversity of Högsvedens nature forest. The eco-sensitive score serves as a prototype to be shared with more dancers and practiced with other nature sites and ecologies.
Journey into the (post) anthropocentric landscape of Dalarna, accompanying program In addition the guests visits unique biotops with rich biodiversity and sites of man-made markings, such as the creek Rogsån, and Ställberg gruva, where they experience the land through colour observations, nature medidation, poetry and soundworks. The journey offers a reflection space on unforeseen consequences of the engineering and extraction that has been done over centuries in the landscape. The different stops are hosted by local artistic initiatives that works in the intersection art/dance/science/ecology.
Le Sacre du printemps* Ecosensibility: Zheng Bo Eco-facilitation, artistic development, production: DACE – Dance Art Critical Ecology Rickard Borgström & Rebecca Chentinell Dancers: Harald Beharie, Ossi Niskala, Víctor Pérez Armero Production Assistant: Heta Asikainen
(b. 1974, Beijing, lives and works on Lantau Island, Hong Kong)
ZHENG Bo is an ecoqueer artist of ethnic Bai heritage. Through drawing, dance and film, they cultivate kinships with plants. These relations are aesthetic, erotic, and political. For them, art does not arise from human creativity, but more-than-human vibrancy.
Zheng Bo lives in a village on the south side of Lantau Island, Hong Kong. Guided by Daoist wisdom, they grow weedy gardens, living slogans, biophilia films, and ecosocialist gatherings. These diverse projects, alive and entangled, constitute a garden where they collaborate with both human and nonhuman thinkers and activists. Their ecological art practice contributes to an emergent planetary indigeneity.
In Le Sacre du printemps Zheng examines intimacy between human and tree through an eco-queer-sexual dance method together with five dancers, conditioned in a Nordic ecology and context. The sexuality and agency of humans as well as trees are exercised as dance-scores, where both humans and trees are considered dancers (although trees may dance very slowly), where they rely on their bodies and movements for interaction, charged with desire, lust, erotic and ethics. For more information: zhengbo.com
DACE – Dance Art Critical Ecology DACE is a platform for curatorial and choreographic explorations on dance and choreography in a More-than-Human World, initiated by Rickard Borgström and Rebecca Chentinell in 2019. Central to the duo is how the body functions as an interface towards the surroundings. Consequently, they invite artists who engage in the rapid technological, environmental and political changes, with a multitude of bodily approaches, and how this might affect our actions, thinking and artistic practice.
DACE traces new bodily sensitivities and interconnections between human, technology and nature in a more-than-human environment. DACE seeks new aesthetic paradigms in the shifting nature of our ecological systems in the geological era of human-made nature. For more information: dace.nu
SUPPORT Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Region Dalarna, IDP the Swedish Arts Grants Committee´s International Programme for Dance, IASPIS the Swedish Arts Grants Committee´s International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts, TINFO Theatre info Finland
Opening night
BERGSPRÅK (displaced)
7 June at Lustholmen MDT
Opening night: Bergspråk (displaced) At MDT Moderna Dansteatern An eco-facilitated program by DACE – Dance Art Critical Ecology Rickard Borgström [FI] & Rebecca Chentinell [SE] 7-11 Juni 2023
Almost exactly one year ago we, a group of dancers, choreographers, artists, researchers and thinkers from the Nordics, Sápmi and South America, gathered in Suttes/Boden in Jåhkågasska to investigate and reconsider the relationship between man and nature with a dance/exhibition Bergspråk, and a symposium Dances and Songs of Earth. Through dance, joik, storytelling, meditation and hikes, we shared and created common, collective experiences around the ecological challenges of the specific places we were coming from, then, now, and in relation to today’s (so-called) green transition.
In Bergspråk (displaced) we seek sensuous ways of approaching today’s ecological crisis in order to illuminate and create more understanding around the interconnectedness of the world, beyond just human needs, and unite in struggles for ecological sustainability across continents.
Bergspråk (displaced) is an eco-facilitated programme that brings together some of the artists who participated in the research in Jåhkågasska last year, all of whom carry bodily experiences from critical ecological events beyond Stockholm’s geography. Through eco-sensitive practices and philosophies such as deep listening, communal being, somatic rituals and joik, the mountain’s struggle is given voice and body – through both we as artists and you as our audience – we hope to actualise some of these ecological issues in this city where political power resides and major ecological decisions are made.
Through bodily testimonies from within the mountain, Bergspråk (displaced) creates a network of ancient, contemporary, and future thought systems to deepen our understanding of this post-anthropocentric landscape we find ourselves in. With dance, joiks, agitation and passionate processions, the great questions of our time are awakened in our bodies, conjuring bewildering insights as collective empowerment.
DACE – Dance Art Critical Ecology DACE is a platform for curatorial and choreographic explorations on dance and choreography in a More-than-Human World, initiated by Rickard Borgström and Rebecca Chentinell in 2019. Central to the duo is how the body functions as an interface towards the surroundings. Consequently, they invite artists who engage in the rapid technological, environmental and political changes, with a multitude of bodily approaches, and how this might affect our actions, thinking and artistic practice.
DACE traces new bodily sensitivities and interconnections between human, technology and nature in a more-than-human environment. DACE seeks new aesthetic paradigms in the shifting nature of our ecological systems in the geological era of human-made nature.
rickardborgstrom.com 