A new work created by Dream Visioner Creatrix Rulan Tangen.
Eco Elegies
photo ©Labverde by Laryssa Machada
“Can embodiment, movement and ritual of contemporary dance reveal how to love the worlds around us, between us, and within us?
What are the ancient waters that flow between?
Can we continue to experience reciprocity by giving and receiving breath?
What is the biodiversity of the soil we root in?
What are the blossoms we offer up to the sun?
We find love and understanding of these eco-systemic multiverses in elegiac fullness of grief, sorrow, loss, fear, anger and desire for transformation, hope, and renewal - to become liberated by embracing the interactive purpose and connection of every life form including the fullness of humanity within this sacred cosmos.”
- Founding Artistic Director Rulan Tangen
ECO ELEGIES
Eco Elegies is a series of interdisciplinary, multisensory performance rituals that responds to time, place, and people.
Reflecting diversity as a centering principle, we explore DE’s emerging concept of “mixed-icism” as a template for relation-building and adaptation in the age of climate crisis.
Each Eco Elegy Ritual iteration is an experiential and immersive journey that invites audiences to become active participants in reconnecting to themselves, each other and the world, summoning in love, gratitude, wonder and compassion for every life form as part of a sacred ecosystem.
Photo by DeAndre Moore
Inhabiting the liminal space of ‘between’
Stemming from our body’s community-engaged knowledge-sourcing, we develop contemporary ritual beyond notions of the proscenium stage, with “mixed” collaborators.
Do we become richly blended, or textured mosaic, or recognizable fusion of diverse elements, or emergently “new'' confluence when we re-mix together?
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Through nuanced and complex corporeal experiences, the ideas of identity, race, nationality, worldview, ancestry, and religions will be deconstructed and expanded to look beyond the binary to cultivate an alternative to the dehumanizing, essentializing, and compartmentalizing of identity within wide view of ecological diversity as the source and living metaphor.
We are centering collaborators who carry mixed identities (such as ancestry, cultural experiences, languages, gender and more) as humans of the “in between’, the “liminal space” of creation, able to call upon multiplicities and complex relations within and around self, as cooperative strands of creation that remind us as humans of our part as caretakers of this planet.
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Choreographically, ECO ELEGIES is rooted in Dancing Earth’s land-dance practice - that evolved from biomimicry, imagination, intuition, memory and empathy - while moving into a relationship with complex rhythms of urban settings.
We will uncover specific forms of movement that are guided by forces of nature, emerging distinctive combinations of these elements as the liminal spaces of alchemy for transformation.
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By considering the premise that all people may be mixed, we will ask: “What of you feels beyond the box of any one definition?”
We use movement to explore how identities shift intentionally/unintentionally in adaptive response to conditions/locations/timing, and how our “mixed-ness” mirrors the biodiversity that is imperative for balance and health in all things....
What can emerge from a feeling of wholeness, from embracing all parts of self?
Eco Elegies Series
Site Responsive and Immersive
Eco Elegies I: 2021, Seven Spirits Film, an international artist collaboration with commission from Marie Mumford with grandmothers and culture carriers, for Nozhem Theater in Canada, as shared at Community Elders gathering in Anishnaabeg homelands
Eco Elegies II: Mar.-Apr. 2022, SIE Festival, in Bogota, Colombia, an invitation as Co-Choreographer, a project of COOP DANZA Inc
Eco Elegies III: Jul. 2022, Women of the Rainbow Earth Film , a collaboration with earth pigment collector
Eco Elegies IV: Sept. 2022, “Offering to Yanaguana”, created with dance company of Alamo College, embodying qualities of Yanaguana’s diverse interconnected ecosystems
Eco Elegies V: Nov. 2022, “Ofrenda a Maje, Tiempo de Otoño, Tierra de Otomi”, with collaborating artists, activists and culture carriers in Mexico, while in residency at Nautilus featuring Quetzal Ecehatl and <ezquite tree advocacy by Arborigen representative
Eco Elegies VI: Jan.-May 2023, Mixed-Icism in Motion, seasonal class series, co-hosted by CSU East Bay Dept. of Theater and Dance
Eco Elegies VII: Apr.-Jun. 2023, Re:Mix Mixed Salons, mixed interdisciplinary salons and open creative labs
Eco Elegies VIII: June 10, 2023, Global Water Dance 2023, with Dancing Earth Summer movement artists participation, with Ancestral Waterways music shared by renowned songstress Pura Fé as an invocation towards an international water vision
Eco Elegies IX: June 11, 2023, Dancing Earth Summer Institute 2023, movement artists ritual offering, on location at CSU East Bay
Eco Elegies X: Aug. 2023, Amazon Art Ecology Intervention, on location in rainforests of Brasil by Lab Verde
Eco Elegies XI: Sept, 8 2023, Ritual of Re:Mix, debuts at Source Festival, with Dancing Earth Bay Area Dance Company at Dance Mission Theatre, Yelamu, San Francisco, with support of Rainin Foundation and CAC
Eco Elegies XII: Oct.-Nov. 2023, Ritual of Re:Mix, performance ritual adaptations and community movement classes brought to community sites in Bay Area with DE Bay Area Dance Company, including Mosaic America Festival at Mexican Heritage Plaza, San Jose; Peninsula Del Rey Senior Center, Daly City; and SNAG Magazine 20th Anniversary at Hummingbird Farm, San Francisco
Eco Elegies XIII: Mar. 2024, Eco Elegies - Ritual of Re:Mix , invited to perform and tour in several locations in Mexico
Photo By Randi Lynn Beach
Multi-disciplinary, multi-sensory, intercultural, and innovative, each ritual performance journey brings the full power of creative imagination to revitalize each participant (artist, collaborator, community member) into seeing the magical realism world around them with refreshed empathetic sensibilities.
Community Support
Dancing Earth’s Eco Elegies project is not possible without the support of our community. Help us develop this new work, support the artists we work with, and continue to activate our communities in the spirit of our mission, to create contemporary dance and related arts through global-Indigenous and intercultural relationships centered in ecological and cultural diversity for creativity, health, and wellness.
