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Moving Ground Performance Installation
May 14, 2022 (rain date May 21)
Olde Mechanicsville Park 12-3 p.m.
Lotus Light Collaboration
Lotus Light Community Center is the recipient of the Arts Build Communities Grant. Thanks to that grant, Fearless Motion and Lotus Light are collaborating on an interactive public art experience.
May 14, 2022 Olde Mechanicsville Park will be transformed into a living sculpture garden. In this iteration, Moving Ground is a 3-hour performance installation. Beautiful and surreal costumed dancers and musicians respond to Zen Koans on banners skillfully created by Ashely Addair. A Koan is a Zen saying that inspires awakening. The audience is invited to walk through this multi sensory experience at their leisure and there is space for the people to try out this form of expression themselves. Through this unusual blend of Koans, Dance, Music and Visual Art we hope to inspire people to discover their own embodied presence and inherent resilience, through a calm and wondrous encounter.
At the end of each hour, audience members will be invited to stroll across the street and explore what else Lotus Light has to offer, and to discuss and reflect on their experience with the other audience members. There will also be related children’s activities available at the center.
In order to engage and prepare the neighborhood for this type of art experience, during the months leading up to the event we will offer workshops of this meditative dance practice to Lotus Light and the following communities at their locations: Helen Ross McNabb Children and Youth Center, Emerald Academy, Maynard School, Beaumont Magnet Academy, Beardsley Community Farm, Children of God Ministries and United Way of Greater Knoxville.
The purpose of the workshops will be to introduce communities to Lotus Light and prepare them to connect with Moving Ground. Our wish is that participants find joy, fulfillment and a deep sense of their own presence.
Pie and Chai fundraiser at Lotus Light
Photo: Todd Steed
Open Rehearsals
All of the rehearsals leading up to the performance will be free in a public space. It is our goal to invite passersby to stop and soak up the stillness and spaciousness.
Moving Ground at Big Ears Block Party
Close up on the Koan
To Learn more about Koans please check out the Pacific Zen Institute
Open Rehearsal at Market Square November 2021
Close up on the Koan
This 16 second time-lapse shows 1.6 minutes of dance.
Laura Bergamy, Angela Hill, Jill Frere
Open Rehearsal at Lotus Light January 2022
Abby Fisher, Ben Maney, Amelia Breed, Laura Bergamy, Darby O'Conner, Alex Pulsipher, Harper Addison
Close up on the Koan
Origin
When Jill was living and dancing in NYC she was introduced to a variation of Butoh, a dance form which originated in Japan, by Cilla Vee Life Arts. Jill performed with Cilla Vee for many years doing a very slow moving but extremely expressive dance (it may take 20 min. to walk across the space). Jill says, “It was art, but it had me meditating before I knew what meditation was.” During a Koan Meditation session, Jill’s impulse to “dance the koan” was so strong that she started experimenting with moving very slowly, resting her mind and letting the koan direct her movement. From this Moving Ground came into being.
Open Rehearsal at Lotus Light - January 2022
Abby Fisher, Ben Maney, Amelia Breed, Laura Bergamy, Darby O'Conner, Alex Pulsipher, Harper Addison
Open Rehearsal at Lotus Light - February 2022
Alex Pulsipher, JD Sizemore, Tim Woody, Angela Hill, Jill Frere
Moving Ground can be a performance art installation
MEDITATION/DANCE
PRACTICE/PERFORMANCE
Mitakuye Foundation Fundraiser 2017
Moving Ground can be a personal meditation practice or a group workshop
Moving Ground is a contemplative art form designed to encourage an experience of embodied freedom. It’s where dance and meditation meet. One’s relationship to the mind softens, the body leads, and we get in touch with inner movements through the outer movements, stillness through motion.