Here with the tallgrass

Here with the Tallgrass is a thesis performance that interrelates the disciplines of botany and dance. Utilizing the structure of a botanical field survey as a choreographic structure, the work uses embodied language as a way of documenting plant observations. Taking place in Hickory Hill Park, the performance moved through three different restored Tallgrass Prairies. Throughout this investigation, processes of dancing as, with, and for plant life emerged. These strategies intermingled and coexisted throughout the work as dancers replicated plant shapes in their bodies to identify plants through dance, moved alongside plant species in response to the environment, and welcomed an audience to the space. Grounded in a sense of deepening our connections to the living world as we move through the climate collapse, the theoretical landscape of the performance was influenced by the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Linda Hogan, Mary Sisiip Geniusz, Andrea Olsen, Lawrence Newcomb, June Jordan, and Robert Hass, among others.