Pointe: For ballet dancers, taking daily class is one of the most natural things they can do.
But taking class in nature is an entirely different story.
Last September, outdoor barre became the new normal for Sarah Longoria during her monthlong stint at Utah's Zion National Park. She lived onsite as an artist in residence, the park's first-ever dancer to be selected for the position.
5 comments:
This is a really cool article. Zion’s residency program is so selective. The fact they picked a dancer, an artist whose artform is not as translatable to the experience as a painter, show that the residency program acknowledges the benefit of being in nature for all media. It seems like Longoria had a really good experience doing barre outside where people stopped her and talked to her about Ballet. It seems like the residency was a really beneficial program for her. She was able to open a dialogue with random strangers about barre, ballet, and dance in general, which is a really interesting and I’m sure positive experience in regards to altering people’s perceptions of dancers. Plus she gets the opportunity to hike the trails. The coolest this is that she choose to choreograph an evening-length ballet that will premiere in 2020 in both Salt Lake City and Zion National Park. That’s a really wonderful opportunity.
I love the connection and realization Longoria made about nature and its connection to her art, especially since performance art is not often associated with nature. From my experience, nature tends to be associated with visual and aural art forms, and also has strong tactile associations. However, we constantly use nature as an inspiration for movement as well; We tell people to act natural or to move organically – hence some of the tourists that watch Longoria were able to see her movements translated in the landscape backdrop of Zion. I guess movement based art is just as visual, the medium is just the human body rather than some inanimate supplies on a surface. Nature really just is. It does not exist to fulfill anyone’s particular wants or needs – we as humans have adapted to fit ourselves into the ecology, and in many cases altered the ecology for our own use. I think that it is inspirational to see an artist realize they do not have to change themselves in order to have valid art, and Longoria seems to have found that headspace while in this residency.
This is a very inspiring article. Longoria brought two things I really enjoy together, Art and Nature. I often feel this is something I can’t do because of the nature of my participation in art. It usually requires some sort of power which usually means indoors. However, this article also speaks about going back to your roots and becoming grounded as a person. This in turn improves the art, your life, and influenced the people around her while she was doing it. This experience honestly, sounds quite amazing and definitely worthwhile. This experience is probably something every artist also goes through just not in this exact way. There are many times where getting back to your roots and doing something different not only helps your art but also revitalizes and energizes your being. I would love to see more of this happening as this is a rare article to come across and rarely see something like this normally although it happens frequently
This is really nice and I feel as though little ventures like this should be promoted more. We talk a lot about going on retreats or just having vacations from work but lots of times we take our work and our daily habits on vacations with us so it doesn't necessarily count. Truly being able to step away from your everyday life and doing things a bit differently can be very rejuvenating and helpful to our souls. In Longoria's case, she was able to change her environment and her daily processes as well as switch up how she approached her work/craft. I'm sure this was a very insightful time for her and allowed her to step back and see her life through a fresher pair of eyes. It really helped that she was also becoming one with nature. As humans I think we sometimes forget that our natural habitat is the natural world around us. That's where we were meant to be. We may not realize it but all of the advancements in the world and technology may be doing us a disservice which is why we should take it upon ourselves to get out and enjoy the natural world. Even if that's something as simple as a stroll in the park once a day to help clear our minds.
This is such a cool opportunity for artist and although I knew that being in artist in residence was something that was quite typical I did not know that it was something the National parks did. Honestly I really enjoy the system the set up in place to make the situation mutually beneficial for both the artist and the park. It was really interesting to see a dancers perspective on this experience as well because it felt very much like it had typically been organized around artist who worked on some type of canvas that was typical of presenting there work in galleries It was very interesting to hear about her interactions with the public when she set up her practice bar outside and their observations of her movements and how they interacted with the space of the national park. I think that going out into natural spaces is so important for artists to get some clarity and be inspired by the world around them. I would be very interested to know if other national parks have programs like this in their system because I feel creating a strong alliance between the arts and national parks could have a really influential outcome which serves to protect and demonstrate the beauty of both parties.
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