Forest Bodies
Donna Volta Newmen
On the occasion of the publication UNTAMED.
01.08.2024
I have always imagined the forest as a place of healing. A place that absorbs and transforms, transmutes and transcends all the diseases it encounters. An organism of multiple plant species communicating with one another, embodying a plurality of voices. I imagine a tree whispering into the ground and whilst the roots transmit the message, other plant species listen and bounce back with their nutrients. It is an interconnected circle of life, it decays, it decomposes, it regrows.
The UNTAMED forest is shown through a camera attached to the dancer’s body. Her spiralling movements reveal majestic trees hovering in the air, silently demonstrating their power, while we hear the eerie silence disturbed only by a sound reminiscent of wind blowing through the leaves and insects swirling around.
In the next scene, the dancer’s body is grasped, touched, held by other hands. The touch of another human body is like a climbing ivy drawing its strength from the body next to it, to find a balance, a structure. Just as a dancer's movements are influenced by gravity, muscle memory and other dancers, the forest thrives on the symbiotic relationships between its species.
When the scar on the dancer’s knee is revealed, it betrays the injuries she has endured that have become part of her evolving story as a dancer, just as the scars on a tree tell the story of its survival through storms and seasons. For the forest, an injury is not seen as something negative; the forest, as powerful as it is, allows parts to perish in the natural process of decay. In this sense, it is rather seen as the birth of something new. Our bodies, like the body of the forest, can endure and transform through injury, with resilience becoming a transformation into a deeper expression of the body.
Published on the occasion of the publication UNTAMED as part of the screendance presented at Wagenhallen e.V. in Stuttgart by artist Donna Volta Newmen.
The UNTAMED forest is shown through a camera attached to the dancer’s body. Her spiralling movements reveal majestic trees hovering in the air, silently demonstrating their power, while we hear the eerie silence disturbed only by a sound reminiscent of wind blowing through the leaves and insects swirling around.
In the next scene, the dancer’s body is grasped, touched, held by other hands. The touch of another human body is like a climbing ivy drawing its strength from the body next to it, to find a balance, a structure. Just as a dancer's movements are influenced by gravity, muscle memory and other dancers, the forest thrives on the symbiotic relationships between its species.
When the scar on the dancer’s knee is revealed, it betrays the injuries she has endured that have become part of her evolving story as a dancer, just as the scars on a tree tell the story of its survival through storms and seasons. For the forest, an injury is not seen as something negative; the forest, as powerful as it is, allows parts to perish in the natural process of decay. In this sense, it is rather seen as the birth of something new. Our bodies, like the body of the forest, can endure and transform through injury, with resilience becoming a transformation into a deeper expression of the body.
Published on the occasion of the publication UNTAMED as part of the screendance presented at Wagenhallen e.V. in Stuttgart by artist Donna Volta Newmen.
