Slow. Quick. Slow.
In between and otherwise. Fixed here, before they vanish.
“The air is part of the mountain, which does not come to an end with its rock and its soil. It has its own air: and it is to the quality of its air that is due the endless diversity of its colourings.”
Lately, animals. Lately, wildlife. Lately, dance. Wild or otherwise.
Read about Week 1 of DanceX at the Playhouse and 두물머리 Dumulmeori (where two rivers meet) at Dancehouse on Fjord Review. With Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon to follow suit.
Lately, the opportunity to dive into The Australian Ballet’s triple bill, Prism, once more, and find in Stephanie Lake’s Seven Days, the connection between each dancer has grown with each variation. Whether coiled around the neck of another or upside-down, askew on a chair, sinking to the floor, the way some days fall, no matter your intention, revisiting something is a gift. With their right hands resting upon their heads, and their left hands upon their right shoulders, the dancers crinkled forward as if concertinaed over their legs in plié. Elsewhere they pitched their upper bodies at a right angle to the floor, and swayed their arms as they glided in procession. Each variation laid over itself shifted the possible readings. Seven Days springs from Jerome Robbins’s New York City sherbet-coloured heartbeat, Glass Pieces, some four decades previous, before William Forsythe, after interval, spools to unspool dancers at impossible speed in Blake Works V (The Barre Project).
In the pause between each, and in this case a repeat dip, a new reading is summoned, as one flows into the other, colouring my interpretation.
Lately, the chance to help a family of five ringtail joeys who had fallen to the ground when the tree that their drey was in was cut down. We’d not intended to take in a quintet, but we thought it was important to keep the family together. So five it is. Five, now named, Homer, Albertina, Humphrey, Pansy, and Pomegranate who have moved into their temporary digs with us at Tiny but Wild.
They had been brought into a 24-hour vet clinic in the snugness and familiarity of their dislodged drey. All from the one family (possibly extended family), all of wildly different sizes, Homer weighed over 90 grams when he came in, and the littlest, Pansy, just under 60 grams.
It is a timely reminder to always check your trees for any possum dreys or bird nests. It is illegal to chop any tree or shrub that possums are dwelling in. And it is illegal, naturally, to move them on. You can help wildlife by fashioning a drey from two hanging baskets to make a sphere or installing a nesting box nearby, in your garden, somewhere they’ll feel safe (and no cats can reach them). As prey animals, they will have more than one dwelling, as just about everyone and everything is a threat to them so they need to keep moving and ever alert.
One week since they’ve come into care and the family of ringtail joeys are settling in well. The littlest of the quintet, Pansy and Pomegranate, have advanced from ‘flatties’ to fluffier, and in the familiarity of a routine, Homer, Humphrey, and Albertina are revealing more of their personalities at feed times. Between dance performances for Melbourne Fringe Festival, The Australian Ballet, and all things DanceX, it seems they grow a little more each time. So much to squeeze into the days, for us all; the theatre for us, and a-flourishing for them.
If all goes to plan, this quintet will stay with us until they are ready for soft release at Sutton Grange, in roughly 6-months time.
Lately, an invitation to get the faraways, to drift, to let the mind wander. And in the blur, the softening of edges, focus on what is thrown into sharp relief. What appears when we slow down. When we look, with purpose. We are reminded of the opportunity to listen to a Grey-headed flying foxes’s heartbeat through a stethoscope. To let go of the outside distraction our ears naturally attuned to and to listen to something deeper, beyond. In the letting go, there it was. An impossibly fast beat. But only audible when you attuned your ears to a new way of listening. The same applies to looking, whether to draw or learn from and find solace within. In looking, you let go to see more. To see the world expand in all its glory.
In Olivia Meehan’s The Art of Nature, “sharp observational skills can help us see beauty. To look upwards and outwards carries the potential for real transformation. It also inspires enquiry, curiosity and empathy — things that live beyond the structures of algorithms and pre-emptive text. The practice of slow looking has emerged as an antidote to our fast-paced times and has found a special place within museums and galleries”.
Lately, these quickly captured moments. In between and otherwise. Fixed here, before they vanish.
Also featured above, a detail from Vanessa Bell’s oil on canvas, The Pond at Charleston, East Sussex, c. 1916; Milton Avery’s oil painting on canvas Yellow Sky, 1958; James Dickson Innes’s oil painting on plywood Arenig, North Wales, 1913; Pierre Bonnard’s Marthe and her dog, 1918; Two ladies carry flowers, 19th century, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, unknown artist (Indian); Highland Landscape, 1920, pastel on paper, by Simon Bussy; and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Ce que dit la pluie, 1895, lithograph in black on velin paper.
Image credit: Edward Bawden (1903–1989), The edge of the wood (detail), watercolour, 1949
