index of shapes

Index of Shapes is a collaboration with a Platanus Tree.

In order to grow, trees break from within themselves out in to the world, crack. The core of the tree is dried and dead, providing the tree with strength and stability while the bark of the tree is dried and dead too, allowing its expansion. The aliveness of the tree resides between life and death, the inside and the outside, decomposing and growing.

Like a hand on a mirror, trees grow in opposite directions. The tree top stretches into light while the other hand stretches into the obscurity of soil. While bringing the sky into earth, trees grow leaves in order to absorb light. Once these dry, they fall and kiss the earth decaying once again in the very same soil in which the tree grows. Tress are a circular ritual.

Every time a tree exhales it walks the world. By threading their meditative state of contemplation into the tree’s time, the dancers breath became as slow as sap. While removing their bark and stretching into light, time slowed down in this shared circular breathing with the tree. “Index of shapes” is a performative question When you exhale, we breathe and when we exhale you breathe, are we two separate entities or one?

Text by the artist