Performance for Naramapanawa Forest
by forest beings & Sara Mikolai
With this audio piece I am diving back into a practice of listening, in which I engage with how movement and sound affect each other in the context of Bharatanatyam dance. During the residency I took this practice into the Narampanawa forest here in Sri Lanka, which is located approximately one hour from where I live. In this exploration I am interested in how
different organisms, beings, resonate with each other as part of one landscape and ecosystem.
How they interact and perhaps respond to each other, creating a biospheric soundscape, as well as how and what of it is perceivable to my own hearing and body. I experience this exploration as a way of re-activating sensory sensitivity and participation in the planetary co-existence of a multiplicity of beings. In critique of the standardized frame of Bharatanatyam dance, but in recognition of how it embraces the multifacetedness of all life-forms depicted in much of its story-telling, the performance takes place on the site of the forest. Dancing, while listening, allowing it to resonate, to be affected, co-existing and participating attentively in a collective interaction.
The work in progress was developed during a remote residency hosted and curated by Playground studio in Munich, where it was shared in February 2024.