The dancer seeks out natural places where she lives that inspire her to pause. She is searching for traces. She is looking for ways within herself to uncover, layer by layer, the potentials of human perception that have been overlaid by millennia of cultural imprinting. In this, she sees herself as a species in evolution and in continuous exchange with the environment that surrounds her, embedding her experience. She dedicates herself to the ability to consciously direct attention to particular processes.
The resulting documentation is an attempt to reflect the sensuous contact with the living, based on the dancer’s own experience.
Katja-Bahini’s previous work has focused on the Contact Improvisation, which is practiced in fluid, non-prescribed physical contact with others as an interplay of giving and receiving weight. Through out contact and travel restrictions since 2020, she was inspired to expand her practice to the structures and landscape in which she lives.
Social dynamics have increased the tendency to bind human attention in virtual spaces of experience. Through her practice, the dancer aims to counter this tendency with immediate sensory contact with the living matter.
The film was realised in Nord Hessen in Germany where the dancer lives and also offers workshops of dance in and with nature.
dance Katja-Bahini Mangold
camera Julian Dollichon, Miriam Fassbender
assistance Armin Dörr
external artistic consultance Marie Meister
editing Katja-Bahini Mangold
technical support & consulting Barak Ben Dov
The project was fundet by a scholarship of Hessische Kulturstiftung.
