I have kept an on going journal of my transition from city living to living in a small rural community in the Gila Valley in New Mexico for three years and some extended stays in a small town in Colorado, Paonia. The land and the people are always part of an interplay for me in finding place.
read journal entries...
- Bringing Nature to Life: The Use of Performance Art for Environmental Restoration
Bringing Nature to Life is a compilation of stories, exercises, poems and art ideas for creating a performance piece to help the natural world. The guide introduces several projects and a section on young women coming of age. There are many photos, drawings and pastels to help illustrate some of the themes we worked on for the performances. It is useful for teachers and parents and young people wanting to work in the arts in service of the wild.
RiverWorks: Performance and Community Art for RIvers
Riverworks is the outcome of a wonderful community arts endeavor. The performances presented in this Guide supported the Annual Gila River Festival, an on-going effort to help the last wild, and free flowing river in New Mexico. Environmental stewardship is an essential part of our work, and science is brought to life through performance art as an experience and not simply as information filed away as a report.
The guide is divided up into four performances: River Voices, River Bodies; Along the Banks; Sensing the River: Animal Presence; and Flood and Creation. This quartet explores culture and voices from the river, life and history found along the banks of the river, our relationship to the animal presence at the river, and the replenishment possible in the flood of creation.
These two Guides gather writing that inspires and moves the concept and feel of a performance forward. There are layers of meaning woven within the content of the writing, and there is enough breadth within the exercises presented in the Guides so each group or individual can create their own performance.
RiverWorks comes out of my personal love of rivers, and particularly the Gila River. The community arts performance is an opportunity to bring conservation, art and community together in collaboration, and for these areas to mirror each other when the realization there is a shared reflection present can feel absent.
It is of the utmost importance to protect and restore our rivers, and by celebrating what they are and not simply what they can be used for, the love of rivers becomes a stronger experience and message for the community.
It is hard in our world to let the edges melt or allow the boundaries to be more porous between subjects, nations and one another. Our notion of defense has become the trajectory of history because of how we inhabit difference and separation. We have lost the sense of what is, and the inherent beauty in the whole story.
My wish is you enjoy the Guides, and all the fine people that are in it, and play with some of the exercises with your family, friends, students and community members, and as my friend and movement teacher Val says, "make it your own." — Nanda
For more information or to order Guides, email Nanda at .