Ania reflects:
So, we have been here a bit more than 3 weeks now.
Today is my first day off in a period of about 10 days since we have been organising and hosting a festival on art and ecology and it ended yesterday. It was really great, workshops and jams in different aspects of contact improvisation, permaculture etc, and in the 2nd week we had 12 artist here in residency doing work. We cooked for them and on my free time I was lucky enough to take part in a few different projects. I was a dancing clown in a video, helped developed a fire ritual with burning birds and sang when two dances where interacting with the trees in the woods next to Earthdance. I did some Swedish cattle calling (kulning) to attract the audience who was walking towards us, and then as the end of the piece I improvised a lullaby. It was all a great experience and people offered some positive feedback.
During the last few weeks I have reconnected with a childhood friend, Nadja, who I have not seen for 15 years. She came to visit me here and we were both part of the fire bird ceremony project and when we were not cooking, cleaning or working with the artists we went for walks filling in the gaps of the many years we have not seen each other. We where amazed by how alike we are and how easy it was to reconnect.
I have bought two canvases and i have started to paint again, soooo wonderful! There has not been much time in the last week to go back to my pink beauty that i started just before the festival, but I am hoping to prioritise it from now on and get on with my creativity in a more structured way.
The honeymoon of arriving here at Earthdance is over now and a more reality based image is starting to unfold. I still very much appreciate the community and the open people that chose to come here, but I am noticing a feeling of isolation for the rest of the world and a little restlessness that comes with that. We are stuck here in the woods and since we do not have a car I cannot chose to leave when I feel like it. Or maybe I am just tired after a very intense period...maybe it is not so bad after all. I guess what I miss is some open space, some fields. Here the woods are quite wild and embracing the houses from all directions. There are not even proper walking paths that make a nice loop, the paths just vanish after a while and the woods take over. In December apparently there was an ice-storm here, which is a weather condition when cold rain falls and freezes as it reaches the ground. On trees it becomes like a heavy layer of ice that make them break. Now the broken trees and branches are covering the floor of the woods and it will take a long time to clear. I had never heard of such a storm before.
I am realising that being at Earthdance does not give us a fair image of this huge country at all. The people we meet here have alternative life styles very particular interest in movement and spirituality. As soon as we leave this place the Real America becomes more obvious. I am noticing that although we are in a different country, so far away from home, i still feel i can relate to what i see and experience. But everything is like in a film. The empty roads, the big trucks, the gas stations (road movies), the accent of the people we meet , their names etc, i know all of this form all the American movies i have seen. It is so strange and real at the same time.
And everything is so big. The cars, the scoops of ice cream, the bottles of deodorant, the portions of food we get at restaurants...everything. Even the trees are big, and the deer I met at 6 in the morning on my way to make breakfast for all the people of the festival. It was at least 2 times larger than a Swedish deer.
Ok, that is it for now. Tomorrow the next festival starts. It is a 5 day contact improvisation jam with 75 guests....
