In my Mother's Garden

 When a body comes in contact with the ground, there is a strong intimate bond formed between the body and the earth. The times I witness my mother tending the garden, I realise it is my first metaphorical encounter with the cycle of birth and death in nature. I have watched my mother nurturing the plants and when one plant suffers for some reason, her body suffers the loss of the plant. And yet the process of growing, suffering and mending continues. 

In 2019 while I was working on a solo piece, I found myself constantly imagining my mother’s garden in the studio space. The poetic freedom, in the space of my mother’s garden, gave me great comfort and ease and helped me realise the importance of being close to nature. While dancing, keeping the reference of the garden in mind, I was exploring what an ideal world on earth could look like!

 This dance dialogue was an intimate interaction between my body and the ideas of preserving and protecting the beauty in nature. Today, I am closer to understanding why I began imagining my mother’s garden in this way. The garden, now a womb, served as a sanctuary to which I could retreat into for refuge. Here, I could mend me, as my mother would, her plants, and gather the strength to face the experiences of the world. 

The profit-driven dystopia we call our reality, somehow made worse still by the pandemic, is drastically shaping the bodies we are becoming and our relationship with nature. More than ever before there is a need for great urgency to stop the environmental degradation. Starting with the personal, to find newer ways in which to engage with our daily lives. There is precedence here, ancient cultures have wielded rituals of chanting and singing as ways to protect, preserve and revive the Earth. Not even that long ago, in opposition to the looming spectre of industry, the Chipko Andolan exemplified the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. 

I think of the work of Israeli choreographer, Dana Yahalomi and her collective, Public Movement, a performative research body which investigates and stages political actions in public spaces. It studies and creates public choreographies, forms of social order, overt and covert rituals. Their work mainly stems from government policies which are shaping public life. I find only the practice of staging actions and of choreographing gestures (which come from personal experiences ) to communicate the effect of global issues, of value for my dance work. I propose to choreograph actions as preparations for the body to strengthen and protect the maternal connection of the body with its land. Much like in the case of my mother’s garden there is a reliability and exchange of unconditional support from the land which forms aspects of our very subtle selves and decides our future forms of habitation. The role of the maternal is highlighted as a reserve of power that helps create and nurture the space of intimate and symbiotic connection between our body and the land. 

Explorations in Dance

* What postures, stances and gestures elicit feelings of protecting the intimacy shared between the body and nature ? Creating a toolbox of actions and gestures from explorations with the body as it relies, resists and takes support from the floor before standing.

* Experimenting with enacting existing gestures of protest i.e the hugging of trees by women (Chipko Andolan), lying face down (die-ins) used by protest groups. 

* Exploring positions that never completely rest on the floor nor remain in standing, rather strengthen and experience shifts in gaze, direction and general perspective of space through squatting. For this phase of explorations, I would like to integrate my practice of Kalaripayattu and explore transitions of the body from standing to squatting, flamboyantly moving towards the ground, stretching and shielding. . The imaginary ecosystem (of the garden) in the proposed work serves as a womb like the “kalari” where the choreographed actions initiate connection and build a relationship of the body to its environment.