Can Trees Really Sing? How do they sound when they sing? Do they change their tune when it’s sunny or wet? What is it like to dance barefoot in a forest? How can we connect to nature indoors? Find those answers and many others at Dancing to the Music of the Forest on Friday March 8th 7:30 pm at Capital High School Old Performing Art Center 2707 Conger Ave NW Olympia.
It is highly recommended to buy sliding scale tickets on-line to save time. Credit cards cannot be accepted at the door: bit.ly/ForestDance
This is a unique participatory event in celebration of our PNW forests! Using a device called Plants Play, we’ll hear biofeedback from trees translated into musical notes with dancers performing on stage while film footage is projected of dancers who moved in old growth and clearcut forests. It’s both a multimedia film and dance performance and an experiential opportunity to ‘tune into’ nature indoors with the audience invited to dance on stage to tree recordings! The evening ends with a Q & A with dancers and Thurston Friends of Trees volunteers so we can celebrate together the local efforts to protect Legacy Forests in W WA and share some inspiration to help continue to save more of Capitol Forest. Executive Director, Lynn Fitz-Hugh said, “We must learn anew, how to live in a new and ancient paradigm: in relationship to the earth.”
Thurston Friends of Trees, a committee of Restoring Earth Connections, advocates for nature, biological and cultural diversity, environmental justice. When we talk about eco-consciousness, we’re exploring why we feel the way we do, and how to turn ecological grief into determination to make positive change for the future of our planet. This is one of many upcoming events for experiencing art that celebrates the natural world and builds awareness and engagement and makes advocates of us all.
Forests are “the lungs” of our state. As we continue to lose our forests at a staggering rate, we lose our best defense: mature mother trees. Mother trees, which nurture life through underground neural networks, are the heart of the forest. Left intact, mother trees can live hundreds, if not thousands, of years. These trees, and the ecosystems they support, are integral to protecting biodiversity and storing huge amounts of carbon pollution.
Recordings of 1500 year old ancestral trees and tiny plant seedlings have been collected over years by Julie Ratner and shared on hundreds of her old growth forest meditative guided walks to explore how to expand our eco-consciousness. Some of these recordings are now being used in a series of interspecies community events to expand awareness of living in nature, tree communication, and how slow meditative silent walks in a forest are proven to be healing.
Just ask Olympia artist and teacher, Kathy Gore-Fuss who paints regularly outdoors in Squaxin park, “I have always loved the cycle of the forest and how the ancients elders life as a tree ends just as it’s new life for support begins.”
Julie Ratner is a tree lover who has been recording old growth trees in the Pacific Northwest for years.
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